Second Best of the Rest
by Shadow Master
Summary: (BtVS/Elements of DB shows/DC movie-verse/Elements of DC comics universe/Elements of Marvel Comics) Legends. They often tell you of those who won the day in the end. They rarely tell you of those gathered in case the primary team failed.
1. Chapter 1

"Second Best of the Rest" by Shadow Master

(BtVS/Elements of DB shows/DC Movie-verse/Elements of DC comics Universe/Elements of Marvel Comics)

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted material contained herein. They are the rightful property of their respective creators and/or associated companies. I make no money from this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this at any point in the future. I write because it's fun and because some readers enjoy my work. Therefore I would greatly appreciate it if you could refrain from taking any legal action against me. I can guarantee you that you won't get even a fifth of your legal fees back from me.

Note 1: Got the urge to write this after purchasing the movie 'Justice League' that recently came out on DVD. I just thought to myself 'what if some higher beings decided to create a backup team in case the cast of heroes from the movie weren't enough?' and then began going through some possibilities. While I know I could've used random heroes from all over the place I wanted to choose counterparts to existing Leaguers while at the same time being different in certain ways. This is what I got.

Note 2: I will be taking some liberties with the backstories of my team. Certain core and inescapable traits will remain while others will be altered in the interests of making things more interesting (at least from my point of view). Whether or not you think it's interesting…well…we'll just have to wait and see.

As always positive reviews are greatly appreciated, constructive criticism will be considered but not necessarily acted upon and people just looking to take a dump all over my work will be cheerfully ignored. No one's forcing anyone to read anything they don't want to read. To those who write reviews purely to bully/harass/insult fan fiction writers I can only say this: have you considered the possibility that your actions might actually motivate the writer to continue writing just to defy you?

Now on with the story.

_Second Best of the Rest_

_**A Hundred Years After the Great Invasion**_

_**Roman Mount Olympus**_

_**Janus' POV**_

"You had better have a good reason to summon us here, Janus," Deimos said as the last of the five he'd summoned finished manifesting in the chamber. "In the wake of Stepponwolf's assault we all have responsibilities that cannot be neglected."

"I am well aware of that, Deimos, however once you have seen what I have seen and hear what I have to say you will agree that this is worthy of all of our time," he said, looking each of his guests in the eyes in turn.

"With words like that I sense a crisis on the horizon." Hercules said, crossing his arms over his chest.

"That is not too far from the truth, Hercules," he said before tapping into his divine power to twist the space in the center of the room and show them a variety of images. "As all of you know my domains afford me a degree of foresight that none save the Three Brothers can surpass. Ever since the Great Alliance succeeded in defeating the hordes of the Dark One I have been attempting to peer deeply into the future to determine if he will ever return."

"I take it from this meeting that he does?" Triton, messenger of Poseidon, asked from his position in the room.

"Yes. Many centuries into the future Stepponwolf will return with his Parademons to search for the Mother Boxes to once more use them to transform the planet into a copy of his home world," he replied as images of the recent attempt became visible.

"I don't see why it's so pressing at the moment," Deimos stated, not sounding worried at this news. "If it won't happen until that far into the future we have plenty of time to prepare for him and for the mortals to replenish the numbers they lost. When he comes, the gods of Olympus will be more than ready for him."

"No… we will not." He brought his will to bear on the images to show them the near future. "In fact of all the gods of Olympus, only we six will remain."

This produced gasps of incredulity and shock from all the others but as the scene that'd troubled him so much the past few days played out for them he could see acceptance growing in their eyes.

"The threat of Stepponwolf and his forces might have temporarily stayed Ares' distaste for the race of men and the women meant to temper their darker impulses but soon the delay will end," he said as the scene showed Ares, the God of War, fighting his kin and slaying them. "His anger, his hatred, towards the mortals will burn bright again and in a surprise attack will seek to slay our kin to claim their power for his own. Should he succeed he will use the power to slay every single man and woman on Earth without mercy, returning it to what it was before Zeus' grand venture."

"While I do not condone the slaying of our kin, I agree with my father," Deimos said, recovering his composure. "All he did was fan the embers of darkness inside man. The evil was already there. Better that they should be washed away so that the planet will once again be in responsible hands."

"If that comes to pass then we will surely perish when Stepponwolf returns," he said, moving the images along to what he had gained from peering into the far future. "Though some might call my power precognition, it is more accurate to say that I am able to perceive an infinitely complex web of choices, probabilities and even a few deviations of complete chance. Normally when I look to the future I see many possible paths it could take and sift through them looking for the paths that have the highest probability of actually occurring. When I attempted to learn all I could about Stepponwolf's return… only two probable paths emerged."

"Only two? What're the odds of that happening?" Morpheus asked with his dream-like voice.

"Suffice it to say that you have better odds of spontaneously becoming one with the universe than me only perceiving two probable futures," he replied before changing the images to the first of the two probabilities. "The first probability shows six champions emerge to fight Stepponwolf and succeed in defeating him. One swift as Hermes, One regent to Poseidon's territory, one a wielder of the power of the sun, one an Amazon with the favor of Zeus, one man of the shadows with an unyielding spirit and one that is both metal as well as flesh. As a united front they shall form the vanguard of Earth's protectors, shielding it from harm while guiding its various peoples into the future."

"Ha! It is good to see the young come into their own," Hercules declared with an approving smile on his face.

"Not if it means they will no longer look to us for aid," Eris said, speaking up for the first time. "Remember the reason why Zeus created them in the first place. They were made to worship us and through their worship elevate our own divine powers to new heights. If these… champions… are formidable enough to defeat Stepponwolf and are but the first of a new breed of mortal, then for what need will the mortal races have for our aid."

"They will always be limited by their mortal bodies, Eris," Triton said, sounding confident. "They age, they wear down and there is a limit to how much power can be channeled through it before it turns to ashes. We are not so limited. When the mortals reach their limits and find that they are unable to overcome a crisis on their own, they will call upon us to save them."

"The other probability though… is this," he said as he showed them the future that chilled him to the very depths of his soul.

Desolation.

Destruction.

The dead and the dying scattered about the world.

This would be the world if Stepponwolf and his master succeeded in changing the planet to their wishes and, at the center of it all the devastation, the symbol for omega so large it could be seen from space.

"So you are saying either the heroes succeed in defeating Stepponwolf or they fail and all falls to the Dark One." Deimos said, shaking off the shock of the images first.

"Seems rather cut and dry to me," Hercules said, being no stranger to battle himself.

In battle you either won or you lost. It wasn't all that strange and it was accepted.

"Is it? Do you really wish to leave the future to only one of two futures?" he asked, making it clear he had another idea in mind. "Or do you want to try something more impressive?"

"What do you have in mind?" Triton asked, not sounding like he was in favor of or against taking another route.

"We six, in secret, form our own team of champions and train them in secret from the rest of the world both mortal and divine," he replied before summoning the image of an island. "Circe's island is vacant and has enchantments that can be restored in short order to keep what happens on it secret. With her death at the hands of the Amazon Hippolyta no one, be they mortal or immortal, is giving the location a second thought."

"Why in secret?" Morpheus asked with his dreamlike voice. "Why to such a degree? If your prediction of the immediate future is true, all of our kin, save Ares, will be dead and he will be weakened almost to the point of losing his divinity altogether."

"Because I do not expect the other pantheons to remain idle for very long after it becomes known that Olympus has been decimated," he replied, allowing the images to fade from view. "With so little to stand in their way they will descend upon our home and pick it clean of anything valuable and we will not be able to stop them. For a long time we stood as one of the top three pantheons on the planet but with our fall some will begin to wonder if the time has come for… a new way of thinking. They will take Zeus' original plan for the mortals and use it to their advantage without any regard for his long term plans."

"'Long term plans'?" Hercules asked, sounding like this was news to him.

"While it was true that he intended to use the mortals as a source of additional divine power, there was another, greater, plan in mind," he replied, looking at the demigod son of Zeus. "When he first conceived the plan he came to me so that I could use my domain over time to measure its success and its potential ramifications as far into the future as possible. I did not see all of what might one day be as a result of the creation of man and woman but what I did see made both of us smile."

"And what was that?" Deimos asked, sounding like he did not approve of secrets being kept from him.

"Agree to aid me and once our work is done I will tell you," he said, not knowing if it would be good to allow the others to know of the future he shared with Zeus.

For some deities it would be a proud moment unlike any other.

For others, however, it would be a moment to fear and quite possibly hate.

While he had known the other five for a very long time, he did not know how all of them would react to that future and he could not risk them turning against him.

For a few minutes, as mortals reckoned them, the deities he had gathered remained silent, occasionally looking to each other in order to gauge each other's position, but at five he knew they'd come to their respective decisions.

Now all that was left was to get to work, finding their champions or, barring that, planting the seeds of their creation by whatever means necessary.

All that mattered was preventing the darker of the two futures from happening.

For any change of great significance sacrifices are required.

They are required of all involved.

Deities included.

_**Many Thousands of Years Into the Future**_

_**North American Continent**_

_**West Coast, California**_

_**Sunnydale**_

"So he's here?" the muscular man on his right asked, looking at the town before them. "The 'linchpin' you were so talkative about earlier?"

"Yes. If we are to defy Fate then he is the perfect instrument in order to do so," the shorter of the two replied, looking at the same town. "He broke a prophecy. I can see no greater proof than that."

"True, but he is rather puny at the moment," the muscular man commented, conjuring an image of the one they'd come to recruit. "I think even Chiron would have had trouble turning the young man into a hero worthy of our needs."

"Not to worry. I've already made arrangements to compensate for that," the short one said, raising his right hand and causing a cardboard box to appear then its lid removed.

"You're kidding." The muscled one sounded only mildly incredulous at the contents.

"Nope. One of my acolytes is setting up the ritual as we speak and, once I have him properly enchant this, the young man will gain all he needs for the struggle ahead," the short one replied, a confident smile on his face.

"I'll admit the few episodes I peeked at showed a skilled fighter but not much better than the cowled detective," the muscular one said as the lid was put back on the box before it all vanished, "but if you were going to use this method, there were more powerful choices you could have used."

"Maybe but you know how it is now," the short one said, sounding disgruntled. "It's impossible for any deity to do anything respectable these days without those five posers coming down on them. It's all gotta be 'plan this' and 'plan that' with them. Anyone not kowtowing like a good little servant gets mystically castrated before being left to fend for themselves in the mortal realm. We've been lucky to last as long as we have."

"True. Shame what happened to Loki but we did warn him that his prank was taking things a step too far," the muscular one agreed with a slight lip curl of distaste. "Still, it was good for a laugh while it lasted."

"Indeed it was," the short one said before his eyes narrowed at the town before them. "Now let's get going. It wouldn't do to be late with what we have planned."

With that the two men seemed to blink out of existence, leaving no sign that they had ever been there to begin with.

_**The Warehouse Where Spike Chased the Costumed Scoobies**_

_**Five Seconds After the Janus Halloween Spell Ended**_

_**Xander's POV**_

'_Well… this is new_,' he thought as he took in everything that he could perceive both inside and out.

It had started out simple enough.

Halloween had come around just as it did every year except this time he and Willow had had a better understanding of the town they lived in. Oddly enough, according to G-Man, Halloween was historically a quiet night for the supernatural, with both vampires as well as demons staying indoors. It should've been easier for them all but of course it was never that easy for them since they got sucked into the yearly elementary school Halloween chaperone program. Up until Snyder had been selected by the school board to replace Flutie the program had truly been volunteer only, with the positive minded man never forcing anything on anyone.

With Snyder, though, anyone the little troll didn't like or simply walked too closely to where the sign-up sheets were located got grabbed and intimidated into signing.

The Scoobies had tried to talk their way out of it but they might as well have been trying to speak Chinese for all the good it was doing them.

With the time they'd been given they had gone to a new costume shop that'd recently opened up, figuring that there'd be some sort of opening sale that they could take advantage of. Upon entering he'd found a wide assortment of costumes and all of them were of pretty decent quality considering that the other places in town within his budget only stocked disposables. They'd separated since, while Snyder had given them some time to prepare, it hadn't been much and when he'd looked about ten minutes later to see how the others had progressed he'd been unable to suppress a groan of exasperation.

There, standing in front of a dress fit for an old-style ball, had been Buffy and, while he'd only been able to make out some of her face, he'd seen the entranced look on her face.

He hadn't needed more than one guess why the look was there: Angel.

The walking corpse older than the United States that needed blood to survive and could never give her children but could very well be a host to a variety of diseases that were capable of surviving in a dead body. It had started off with the whole mysterious stranger routine but then had evolved into something Shakespeare would've written with both girls who were his friends eating it up. He'd tried to explain to them that this was not something that should be encouraged, that it'd only end in heartache, but they wouldn't listen. Being teenage girls they were entranced by the idea of love conquering all obstacles and when he tried to push harder they'd just written it off as jealousy. In the end all he could do was try his best to keep his opinions to himself and wait for the day that he'd be proven right so he could cushion the blow if he could for the girls who meant so much to him.

With this in mind he'd done what he could to force himself to turn away and focus on his own costume instead of being mad about Buffy's.

He'd perused, pondered and even picked a few up off the hooks they were on to get a better look at them but only when the store owner was putting something new out did he find his costume. The cartoon hadn't been on the air long and he'd had to stay up late to watch it but nevertheless he'd loved it as well as its central character, even if the guy was a little stupid. At first he'd been a bit wary of buying it since he didn't exactly have the muscles to make it look good but in the end he'd chosen to get it.

He'd chosen to take a chance, if only to pretend to be the heroic Son Goku for a single night.

Everything had gone pretty well at first, even if only one or two kids recognized who he'd dressed up as, but then of course everything had to go pear-shaped. He'd felt… something… in the air that had his primitive instincts interpret it as a threat.

That had been all he'd been able to perceive before his mind and his body had been overwhelmed by sensations he had never experienced before in his life. For the life of him he had no recollection of how long it'd taken for it all to go away but when his mind had recovered he'd found himself no longer in control of his body. No matter how much strength of will he'd tried to muster he'd been unable to reassume control of his body.

Fortunately for him there was no need since it hadn't taken him long to realize who had been given control of his body.

It had been a weird night but at the same time it'd been awesome since for the first and probably the last time he'd gotten to experience what it was like to be a full blooded Saiyan warrior with ample training. Whether it'd been costumed people, demons or vampires none of them had been able to lay a single finger on him while he had been able to beat them with the gentlest of blows. It had only been Goku's laid back attitude when facing someone weaker than him that'd allowed Spike to take Buffy hostage. Normally this wouldn't have been possible since the blonde Slayer was more than up to taking on William the Bloody but since she'd been trapped in the personality of an eighteenth century noblewoman, she'd been helpless.

As fast as Goku had been during the course of the newest bit of Hellmouthiness, the grip Spike had secured on Buffy would allow him to snap the Slayer's neck like a twig was even faster.

Fortunately the spell ended before there could be any loss of life and Buffy had been able to punch Spike into a wall.

THAT is where things had gotten weird and had stayed weird.

Right in the middle of Buffy turning to speak with the rest of them everything had… frozen, like someone had pressed pause on the entire space-time continuum. However his movements were not impeded in the least and so he'd gone from friend to friend, trying to see if things were as bad as they looked at first glance.

They were.

Despite waving hands in front of faces, talking and then even yelling, none of them reacted in the slightest. Even after more than enough seconds had passed for a normal person to blink none of them did, reinforcing that this was all some sort of stasis and that only left the question of what type it was. Was it spatial as in a set area was frozen or was it individualistic, with every humanoid thing in the building being immobilized? As soon as his mind came up with the question he shook his head with a snort, knowing that he didn't have the IQ to answer that or make any sense of it.

All he could do was stand guard over his friends in case anything came to harm them and hope that this stasis would wear off eventually.

"They're not really frozen, you know," a voice said from behind him. "I've actually pulled you out of the normal flow of time. You're literally in the space between seconds."

Turning around he found himself looking at two people.

The first was definitely body builder material but not disgustingly so. He didn't look like he was using steroids too much but he definitely looked like he could break even an Army Ranger in half without even trying. Dressed in a leather vest and cargo pants, he was intimidating even with a perfectly neutral expression on his face.

The second was easily two feet shorter, wearing a rumbled suit that had probably doubled as pajamas for the last ten years straight. It was somewhat contradictory to the… person?.. .wearing it since the person looked to take personal upkeep very seriously with perfectly trimmed nails and hair. However when he looked at the being's eyes he instantly knew that whatever else shorty might've been it wasn't human.

There was too much DEPTH to those eyes and he didn't mean literally but rather figuratively.

"O-kayyyy… gotcha," he said, trying to figure out whether he was in a good situation or a bad one. "So… I take it you want something from me?"

"Indeed we do, Xander! You see, there's a bit of a problem on the horizon, a rather big one, and while there are certain 'assets' lined up to deal with it, their victory is far from absolute," the short one replied with a smile of approval. "Therefore my allies and I have decided to prepare a contingency plan of sorts, a secondary team of champions as it were, to step in should the first group of 'assets' fail. We would like you to be a member of this team."

Huh.

For someone who'd always been picked last or near enough to last for it to make no difference, this was a bit of a shock. Fortunately his mind allowed him to bounce back quickly enough and so he considered what he'd been told. Naturally he came to the same conclusion that he normally did whenever he considered trying to aim for something above what he'd managed in the past.

"If you're putting together a team of champions, shouldn't it be Buffy you're talking to?" he asked, looking at the Slayer in question. "I mean, she's got the full superhero package, including the whole 'Chosen One' title going for her. Me? I'm just a high school kid barely making decent grades."

"Sadly Miss Summers falls under the jurisdiction of some, shall we say, unlikeable beings that would very much object to us recruiting her for this effort," the short guy replied, sounding like he very much didn't like these 'unlikeable beings'. "As for you being less than qualified, that's been fixed quite nicely by the spell we arranged to be cast tonight. As of right now you're a full blooded Saiyan with the same genetic potential as the fictional character Son Goku. With a bit of training time I have no doubt you'll be able to fly circles around Miss Summers! LITERALLY!"

"I'm… I'm not human anymore?" he asked as he looked down at his arms to see any signs of difference.

Honestly he wasn't sure how he felt about no longer being a member of the human race. On the one side he'd never been anything else and, while there'd been some problems, he'd been able to cope with a little help from his friends. On the other hand as plain old human Alexander Harris his prospects for the future were not very bright since, even if he pulled off awesome marks by graduation, his parents would never pay for him to go to college. Hell, even if he got a scholarship Tony would probably do everything he could to sabotage things.

Tony was a petty, drunken, waste of a human being like that.

On the other hand, if he was a pure blooded Saiyan with the genetic potential of Son Goku, then that meant that all he had to do was buckle down, do some serious training that would kill a normal human being and he'd likely be able to take on anything shy of a demigod. Considering the fact that he had yet to see something in Sunnydale capable of throwing telephone poles at him or tear down a three story building with punches alone, he'd be pretty much untouchable. From a nobody who at best might make decent sidekick material to a hero in his own right… not a bad deal.

That, of course, made him suspicious. No one gave something this good to anyone, much less him, without some strings attached.

"What's the catch?" he asked, narrowing his eyes with suspicion.

"The 'catch', as you put it, is that you'll have to leave your friends and your hometown behind for a while," the large muscular man replied with understanding that appeared to be genuine. "The 'unlikeable beings' that my friend here mentioned place a great deal of confidence in their plans and strategies. They don't take kindly to outsiders such as us coming up with plans of our own and they DEFINITELY don't like anomalies running about potentially ruining their plans. Considering you've already managed to ruin one of their plans by saving your friend there, I doubt they'll like the idea of a Saiyan version of you getting more powerful by the day."

"But why would they be mad about me saving Buffy?" he asked, trying to figure out how such a great thing could be considered bad. "I mean, if they're the ones who made her the Slayer then shouldn't they be glad I saved one of their champions?"

"They should be but they aren't. For them they have the future planned out to a T, with everything supposed to happen like dominoes falling one after another," the short one replied, not concealing his dislike. "Buffy Summers was supposed to fall and her fall was to trigger another series of events, leading to some objective being accomplished by one of their champions. By saving her you've introduced a flaw in their plan and, while they might not be able to remove her themselves, it does mean that they go a little red faced, angry, whenever you're brought up for discussion. If you can do that as an ordinary human, what do you think their reaction will be to a Saiyan version of you?"

An image of Snyder absolutely furious with a red face and a vein bulging came to mind before multiplying in number to what you'd expect to find in any sort of government committee.

"Meltdown city," he said, shaking the image out of his mind.

"Exactly. So in order to bring you up to where you need to be, your training will need to be someplace secret, away from the Hellmouth," the muscular man said with a nod. "We've already made sure that all the essentials are there and the location is sufficiently hidden so that only someone or something that already knows where it is will be able to find it."

It sounded logical enough and the fact that the place would already be outfitted was definitely a plus.

Just one question needed to be answered.

"How long will I be away?" he asked, wanting to know how long the Scoobies would be without him.

While he didn't think he was a crucial part of their past successes against the forces of darkness, he still didn't like the idea of leaving them in the lurch if he could somehow prevent it. If it was just for a couple of months or so then that'd be acceptable but if it was for a year or more then he had some conditions that'd need to be met.

"Twenty years. Minimum." The muscled one replied with a serious and certain face.

…The hell? "WHAT!?"

"Is it really such a surprise? Son Goku was twenty-four years of age when Vegeta and Nappa arrived on Earth to claim the dragonballs in the cartoon you chose your costume from," the short one said, as though it was all perfectly logical. "At the very least it probably took him eighteen to t6wenty of those years to become the proficient fighter you saw and generate the amount of ki needed to beat someone of royal Saiyan blood. While some people might like to think that hard work and dedication can let a commoner surpass a noble, it's not that cut and dry. Royalty among peoples like the Saiyans don't choose brides out of love but rather for political reasons as well as the likelihood that any offspring between the two will produce a superior Saiyan. Considering that this usually goes on for centuries, if not millennia, then Prince Vegeta had the very best genes his race had to offer."

"Don't get us wrong. Son Goku is definitely one of those diamonds in the rough that can manage to beat the odds but he's more the exception than the rule," the muscle man said, trying to show respect for the fictional character. "Most common warriors could train for the rest of their lives and never match an elite Saiyan. In your case, you might have the same genetic potential that Goku had but that just means that if you apply yourself and train as hard as he did you'll become as strong as him. Even then it'll take time."

"And I won't be late to do whatever it is you want me to do?" he asked as reason quieted his incredulousness by a bit.

"While the exact date of the 'problem' arriving isn't clear, we do know it'll happen in just under twenty years. Give or take a couple of months," the short one replied, not sounding too worried. "By that time you and your five teammates should be more than ready to face it."

A thought occurred to him.

"Don't suppose you can tell me more about this threat?" he asked, wanting to know more before he signed on the proverbial dotted line.

"Better. I can show you," the short one replied before waving his arm like a magician and causing the world around them to change.

In place of a warehouse's interior there was what looked to a stretch of green grass close to the sea and quite lovely… right up until the fire spewing space ships descended from the sky. Before the vehicles even visibly got close to the ground the grass ignited, turning to ash in seconds before spreading outwards. One by one they landed and from the central one came a giant of a man that probably could've surpassed Nappa in height by a full head. Clad in blue and grey armor with a horned helmet, the man was definitely intimidating, especially with the large axe in his right hand.

"His name is Steppenwolf and he is a ruthless warrior from the hellish world called Apokolips. In the name of his dark lord he has conquered countless worlds and millennia ago the next chosen to fall had been Earth," the muscled one said as the scene played out. "With the use of three devices called Mother Boxes they intended to transform this planet into a perfect copy of Apokolips, utterly destroying everything else. An alliance of Amazon warriors, Atlanteans, Men and even champions from the stars rose to oppose him and, after a fierce battle, the Boxes were stolen and Steppenwolf was defeated."

"However my gift of precognition, the ability to see the future, has informed me that in just under twenty years Steppenwolf will return to atone for his defeat," the shorter one said even as the scene of the Mother Box's initial attempt to transform the Earth played out. "And if he wins… this is likely to be what the world will be turned into."

With those words the changes and destruction being caused by the three Mother Boxes accelerated at an insane pace until the view shifted to an orbital one of Earth. It was like something out of one of those doomsday movies where some experiment from a shady corporation got loose and wound up turning everything into one big wasteland. Once the last bit of blue and green vanished from the planet he suddenly found himself someplace else and only if he squinted a whole lot could he tell that some of the rock formations around him had once been buildings. Metal was seriously melted and warped, the concrete crumbling like a sand sculpture in the wind. Taking a step he felt something give underfoot at the same time a cracking sound reached his ears.

Looking down he reflexively leapt backwards when he saw that he'd just crushed a human skull beneath his boot.

"Not every human would be killed by the transformative powers of the Mother Boxes. Some with the speed and foresight to make it to nuclear bunkers or to the deepest levels of mountain facilities will survive," the muscled man said, only sounding vaguely haunted by the imagery surrounding them. "However those who survive and emerge from their places of safety will soon wish they had died with the rest. The forces of Apokolips will force them into slavery or worse, transforming them into disposable shock troops called Parademons for use against the next world they assault."

Looking at the imagery of the 'Parademons', he couldn't help but compare them to what'd happen if the governments in the world got the idea that combining demons with cybernetics was a good idea.

"This is what we wish to prevent," the short one said as they returned to the frozen environment of the warehouse. "Will you help us?"

It was a terrible future and the thought that if he refused them he might be condemning the world to this fate almost made him leap for 'yes' but he fought the reflex down. As terrible as it was, he couldn't take anything at face value. If there was one thing that he'd learned early after hooking up with Buffy it was that nothing was what it appeared to be. With demons and magic being all too real these two could just be some assholes pulling a fast one on him by tricking him into accepting their deal. As cynical as he was, though, one question threw a monkey wrench into the trick angle: why would any demon bother with him? He was just one more cow in the herd, one more pig in the pen, with nothing all that remarkable or valuable about him.

It could just be a case of two demons having some yucks at his expense…

…or it could be exactly what it looked like.

"Fine. But on one condition that is to be followed both to the letter and keeping true to the spirit of it." He decided that if he was going to screw up he might as well TRY to be smart about it. "While I'm training you take care of my friends. You keep them safe, sane and at least halfway happy. Trouble comes calling you do what you can to help, by hook or by crook. If they need info to come out on top you find it and get it to them. If they need some sort of mojo necklace or potion ingredient you get it for them. If they're up against something they can't beat you find a way to give them the edge they need to come out on top. This is non-negotiable."

"And if we refuse?" the muscled one asked, giving away nothing.

"Then you can take back your Goku upgrade and get the hell out of Sunnydale," he said with a bit of icy chill. "Sure, it could mean the entire world goes to hell but if my friends get hurt or die before then because I wasn't there to help, then Satan can have his prize."

The two beings looked each other in eyes for a minute or two, giving him the feeling that they were probably telepathically communicating with each other since that was how the movies often showed it happening. In the end, though, with disgruntled looks, they turned to him and nodded.

"Very well, Xander. In exchange for your cooperation in combatting Steppenwolf upon his return, we will do everything within our power to aid in keeping your friends sane, safe and at least halfway happy within the criteria you specified," the short one said, sounding like he was expecting it to be a heavy workload. "However be aware that we will have to be… indirect… with how we provide that aid. The 'unlikeable beings' will come down on us like the wrath of the Almighty if they catch us doing anything to mess up their plans."

"As long as my friends are still alive, relatively unharmed and happy when I come back, it's all good," he said, glad to have this little bit of security even if he had little reason to trust the duo.

Aside from the fact that they were giving him a choice in the matter rather than knocking him unconscious, having their way with him and then dropping him on Buffy's front lawn dead.

"So… when do we leave?" he asked, wondering if he'd have time to pick up a few odds and ends from his room.

Pictures and the like to remind him of what he was training to protect.

"Right now," the short one said before snapping his fingers, causing a circular hole to appear beneath him.

Seeing as how he didn't know how to fly using ki just yet there was only one thing he could do.

Fall.

_**The Warehouse After Xander's Departure**_

"Was that really necessary?" Hercules asked as the hole that'd sent Alexander Harris on his way vanished.

"No, but it was funny!" Janus said, chuckling a bit at the look that'd been on Harris' face.

"I am surprised that you agreed to his terms," Hercules said as he began to notice the two of them sliding back into normal temporal sync with reality. "Usually you'd just come up with a bunch of complex words that'd make it sound like you said yes but in fact were saying no. He'd never know the difference."

"Oh, he would. He sees more than most people think and helping the Slayer for over a year would've taught him to be on the lookout for that trick," Janus said, finally ending his mirth. "No, it would be better to simply agree than try to trick him."

"It might attract the attention of those idiots with their halos," Hercules said, not liking the idea of bumping into THEM. "You know they keep a close watch on their 'Chosen One'. It's why we chatted with Harris this way instead of in normal time."

"Perhaps, but I have seen the futures of this group and most of them have Miss Summers and her friends defying them anyway," Janus said before leading his friend to a nearby door. "By helping her in accordance with Harris' wishes, we'll be keeping them distracted longer making it that much more likely that they won't spot the island."

"I thought you said its defenses and wards were fully repaired and operational," Hercules said, a bit of concern as Janus weaved a pattern of magic over the door creeping up.

"Both the defenses and wards are working fine," Janus said as he waited for his spellwork to settle. "However magic, even divine in origin, evolves over time. While those idiots are slow to accept what is 'new and improved' that doesn't mean it's not possible for them to have gained something capable of detecting the island in spite of our efforts. Therefore the more we get them to look at our right hand, the less chance they'll bother to see what our left hand is doing."

"I just hope that everything works out," Hercules said as the door opened to reveal someplace that definitely wasn't Sunnydale at night. "We've put in a lot of hard work since Ares killed off everyone else. I don't want to see it all go to waste."

"You're still not happy about that one recruit, are you?" Janus said as the two of them walked through the doorframe to their destination.

"The others are heroes where they came from, good people, but that one… she chose the darkness over the light," Hercules replied as he felt the change in atmosphere's flow over his frame. "Who's to say she won't decide to switch sides?"

"It's possible except for one thing that I have faith in," Janus replied as they finished passing through to the other side and the door began to close behind them.

"And that is?" Hercules asked with the door was halfway closed.

"Alexander Harris' ability to tell destiny to go fuck itself." The door finished closing and time resumed its normal flow.

_**An Island Somewhere in the World**_

_**Xander's POV**_

"Unnhhhh! The second I learn it, those two are getting Kamehamehaed into the next dimension," he groaned bitterly as he pushed himself into a sitting position.

This definitely put a dent in the credibility of the duo since you'd think if they wanted him to trust them that they'd just open a door and let him walk safely through. Dropping him just under the height that would've resulted in him breaking bones onto some island that he presumed was to be his new training area for the next twenty years was not a good first step.

Getting to his feet, he looked around to try and figure out where he should go next since he presumed some sort of house or structure had been prepared for him to live out of while he trained. After looking about and seeing nothing but dense forest, he decided to go for the simple solution: climb the nearest tallest tree to the top and get an elevated view of the immediate area. At the same time he decided to see just how far along his newly Saiyan-ized body was in terms of strength and agility. Leaping off the ground for the tree trunk, he found himself only a little impressed that he managed to make it a quarter of the way up the tree in one go. Depending on where in the Dragonball timeline you looked, Goku could either make it to the top of a tree in three hops or completely clear the treetops in one jump. Given the results of his initial attempt, he felt it was safe to say he was probably closer to where Goku had been as a kid and Bulma had first met him than where the hero had been when he'd first met Raditz.

_Guess I really will need those twenty years,_ he thought as he resumed leaping up the tree.

Once there he looked at the area, hoping to find something that looked like it might be a building or a training area. If he was lucky then the rest of his 'team' had already been assembled and they'd be able to fill him in on anything he didn't already know. After all, while the duo, who he was beginning to suspect were deities, might have told him a lot, he seriously doubted that they'd told him everything. When negotiating or perhaps briefing someone, you only told them what you needed to in order to get them to sign on and nothing more.

Standard military 'need to know' procedure at its finest.

However there was a chance that, whoever his teammates were, they'd been told more or had been smart enough to ask the more important questions before signed on. If they all pooled their info they could hopefully gain a clearer picture of what they'd been asked to do and who precisely they were working for. His instincts had told him that he was right in labeling the two men deities but that still left a lot of ground to cover since every culture had a deity or a set of deities that they worshipped. Seeing as how he didn't think that deities were limited to their specific nations of origin the men could literally be any male gods he could think of. When you took into consideration the fact that gods routinely proved that they could change their forms, then it was possible the two men were in fact women.

Suddenly his decision to accept their offer, even with the condition he laid down, didn't seem quite so bright.

_Wait… there!_ he thought as he spotted what looked to be an orange comet emerging from the clouds above.

A comet, however, could not change its course without some sort of outside force acting on it.

This orange comet could and did.

He watched as it sharply changed its course to once more ascend back into the sky, back into the clouds, only to return from the white fluffy stuff a few moments later. He hadn't heard anything so to the best of his knowledge it hadn't hit anything and nothing had hit it. For all that he could tell it looked as though it had simply chosen to turn around once it escaped his vision but that didn't make sense to him. Why soar into the clouds only to return moments later? In his mind the comet looked like it was trying to leave this island but somehow was being turned back whether by illusion or by some other form of mojo.

_Looks like the duo don't want anyone to back out of the deal early,_ he thought a bit concerned about this revelation. _Makes me wonder why they think we would._

After all he presumed that the remaining members of his team had been cherry picked from all across the planet for the purpose of stopping Steppenwolf. If the alien came and did what the duo had showed him might happen, then it was everyone's concern and in everyone's best interests to see that that future never came to pass.

_If that is a person of some kind then perhaps my recruiters weren't as forthcoming with the details with them that they were with me,_ he thought seeing it as a real possibility. _Guess I'll be the one filling THEM in._

First, though, he had to get their attention.

How?

At his current distance just yelling wouldn't cut it, so that meant some sort of ki technique flashy enough to be seen from a distance. He doubted very much that he could do a Kamehameha wave with his lack of knowledge and experience but there was a simpler technique that might just do the trick. It was certainly flashy enough but the question remained if he could actually pull it off.

There was only one way to find out.

Positioning his feet so he could remain atop the tree without having to be worried about falling down, he closed his eyes and directed his focus inwards. Think. According to the show ki was basically the energy your soul generated and it could make more with diligent training over time. As for how you got control over it… the show never really went into a lot of detail aside from expressions of focus on the character's faces and the tensing of muscles, plus under certain circumstances yelling really loudly. He'd given the matter only passing thought since he first watched an episode but he figured it might something akin to being able to get yourself psyched up without any external cause. After all yelling, tensing muscles and lots of focus contributed to getting the old adrenaline pumping which, in turn, made you feel much more powerful than when you were calm.

In this case though he decided taking baby steps might be more successful than trying to go straight to the yelling part while trying to intentionally pop a blood vessel.

Looking inside himself, he tried to get a feel for his ki, the energy given off by his soul, and how it radiated outward from the center of his body. He imagined that it would be in its 'calm' state at the moment, so it wouldn't be readily noticeable but he hoped that'd it'd give off a tingle or feel different enough from the blood flowing through his veins that he could spot it. Time passed and near the end he feared that even after the Halloween spell he was just too new to the whole ki warrior thing to do what he wanted to do.

Then he felt it.

Like a light breeze passing through a room so gently that you almost missed it.

Its flowing nature almost had him mistake it for blood but, when he experimented by willing it to slow even further, it responded if only a little.

Now that he could identify it, he began to use his will to direct it to his hands since that was where the technique came from. He honestly didn't know how much ki was required to make what he wanted to occur happen, so he worked for five minutes straight to gather as much as he could manage and hold beneath the skin of his hands. It was like trying to keep shampoo gel from sliding off the sides of your hands when a little too much was squeezed out. Still, when the time came to execute the technique he went all out, hoping that enthusiasm and resolve would be enough where skill and experience was lacking.

"Taiyōken!" he yelled, the fingers of each hand splayed out on either side of his face close to his closed eyes.

He could tell that he'd managed to pull off the technique right because he could feel the ki he'd gathered in his hands explode outwards into the open air WITHOUT destroying said hands in the process. Still, he waited a full thirty seconds before he risked opening his eyes since he didn't want to risk blinding himself by accident. That was pretty much the purpose of the Taiyoken, or Solar Flare, technique: to temporarily blind opponents either with the purpose of escaping or creating an opening to attack.

In this case, though, he was using it to signal the orange comet that he believed was his teammate so they'd come to him for an official meet and greet.

Opening his eyes, he found that his plan had worked out wonderfully.

Wonderfully, in the sense that in the thirty seconds he waited for the light of his technique to dissipate, the orange comet had changed course towards him and crossed the distance almost entirely. The almost part meaning that the comet, or rather the auburn haired, orange skinned, green eyed female humanoid wearing armor that screamed 'space amazon', was now less than two feet away from him. However rather than do something encouraging like come to a stop so that they could talk, the woman who only looked a couple of years older than him instead looked like she intended to barrel right into him like a battering ram.

"Wai-!" was about as far as he got before she slammed into him with enough force to knock the air from his lungs.

They crashed through a tree or two but fortunately for him none of them were thick enough for the impact to do him serious harm.

Still hurt like a sonuvabitch, though.

As soon as enough of his strength returned he quickly grabbed the woman by her armored wrists and, in a move of desperation, tried to flip her over his head. He didn't know how it worked but was glad it did since it sent her through more trees while allowing him to grab ahold of another and spin around it, depleting the momentum he'd received from his attacker. Dropping to the ground, he took quick stock of his damage and was surprised to find that, aside from some scrapes and moderate to light bruises, he was in okay shape.

_Did I use ki to toughen up my body or make some kind of body barrier?_ he thought as he watched the Miss Orange recover from his throw and turn to face him. _Body must've done it without me knowing about. Probably some instincts I picked up from Goku._

Getting a better look at his opponent, he could see that she was wearing what to him looked to be a one-piece metal bathing suit that, thankfully for his teenage brain, hid more than it showed, metal gauntlets protecting each arm up to the elbow, boots that went to mid-thigh and a helmet that let her hair flow freely while still providing protection to the rest of her head. He could tell immediately that she wasn't a civilian dressed up to look like a space amazon but rather actually had the body as well as the skills to back up her appearance. Most girls who dressed up in outfits like this for costume parties or Halloween were fit enough but you could tell that they'd never done weight training a day in their lives.

This one had definitely put in the necessary gym time but not so much that she could try out for one of those female bodybuilder competitions where the contestants spent fifteen minutes assuming different positions to show off their impressive musculature.

_Now all I have to do is try to talk her down and convince her that I'm not an enemy,_ he thought taking in the expression of 'I am gonna kick your ass' on her face. _Easy, right?_

Then there was no more time for thinking, only doing, since it was then that his teammate surged forward at him with a combination of a push off and a bit of flight.

Knowing he didn't stand a chance against a trained warrior at his current stage of development, he focused on dodging hoping that by not doing anything hostile to her it'd tip her off that he wasn't a threat. If that failed he'd wait until she took a moment to try and figure out a way past his dodging to try talking to her in the hopes that reason might work. After all, if she was really supposed to be a member of a team intended to save the world then she had to be a reasonable person, right? Sure, berserkers and deadly animals were useful in a fight but they often required minders in order to ensure they attacked who they were supposed to attack and stopped when they were supposed to stop. Beasts and berserkers, though, tended to go for either caveman fashion or seriously durable armor when clothing as employed and this was definitely not the case here.

Too bad he'd forgotten one thing.

Dodgeball? He sucked at it and the instincts he'd apparently gained from Goku were only marginally helping him.

Sometimes he managed to cleanly dodge the woman and other times she painfully grazed him, sending him spinning for a bit before he righted himself. In the end she proved to be a quick study of his methods of evasion and so, when next she surged forward, she waited until the last possible moment to maneuver herself mid-air so as to execute a sweeping roundhouse kick to his side.

It hurt! Not as bad as he'd thought since he figured instincts had once again directed ki to the targeted area to toughen it, but STILL it was not a good feeling.

As he did his best to bring his rolling to a stop and get back to his feet he looked up to see his 'teammate' once more charging him and so he did the first thing that came to mind: he waited until the right moment and then did his best to grab the arm that was trying to punch him. Throwing all the strength he could muster behind it because BOY was this lady strong, he soon found the other arm coming at him, causing him to mirror what he'd done to the first. However he knew that at any moment the woman would probably try to kick him or simply swing him into the nearest solid object so he had to talk fast.

"HEY! I'm not your enemy! I'm you're teammate!" he yelled in the hopes of breaking through whatever battle fog she might've been in. "STOP!"

For a moment it looked as though he was getting through to her since the power being poured into her arms was beginning to drop. However the whole 'he who hesitates loses' rule must have been brought up because then the power ramped back up, so he allowed himself to fall backwards while bringing his right foot up to throw her past him.

At least that was the plan.

However again she showed her incredible skill as a warrior by anticipating this move and shifting in such a way that his leg hit nothing but air. However this also had the side effect of throwing her off balance and as a result she fell on top of him instead of being thrown like he'd intended, but oddly enough she wasn't any heavier than any other girl her visible age. He'd considered the possibility that because she was super strong, durable and alien that she might have been denser and therefore heavier but she wasn't.

Of course this was all peripheral since by sheer chance, beating odds that even the Almighty wouldn't have bet against, when she'd fallen on him their lips met.

He wouldn't have called it a kiss, neither of them had initiated it or put any passion behind the act, but still it was close enough that it had his mind buzzing. After all, despite being an alien, she was unmistakably beautiful, curvy in all the right places and, given his usual luck with the opposite sex, this was probably going to be the most action he'd have the entire time he was on the island. As a result, when his teammate pushed off of him and looked at him, it was with eyes of understanding and, thankfully, reduced hostility.

"Who are you?" she asked, rising to her feet with her guard still partially up.

"Xander. And you?" he asked, hoping that his good luck kept on going.

"Koriand'r of Tamaran," Koriand'r replied looking like she finally chosen to classify himself as something other than an enemy. "Do you know where we are? Why we are being imprisoned here?"

_Definitely hasn't been told the whole story_. "We're not exactly prisoners here and I'm not sure if this island has a name or not. The guys that sent me here just said that it'd be where we'd be training for the next twenty years or so."

"Training? For what?" Kori asked with a bit of curiosity combined with confusion.

Deciding it was probably best to give her the same story he'd been given, he privately wished that he had the power to produce incredibly realistic holograms. After all a guy could tell you a story but words were just that: words. However if you had some visuals to show, your story became much more believable.

He just hoped he didn't screw this up.

_**An Hour Later**_

_**The Former Island Lair of Circe**_

_**Koriand'r's POV**_

It was a fantastic story akin to the tales her father had told her when she was but a child.

However she sensed no deception from Xander and the hell she had been through as a prisoner of the Psions had seriously compromised what she once defined as possible or impossible. Six years enduring every manner of torture and trauma imaginable at the hands of the sadistic scientists even as they experimented to see just how much energy her body could absorb before it could hold no more. Before she had been turned over to the Citadel by her father in order to ensure the safety of Tamaran, she had believed that there was a limit to how evil a living being could be and no limit to the strength of goodness and the light.

After the first week as a prisoner and pet experiment of the Psions, she learned differently.

Evil had no limits and there were limits to what good people could do without the necessary knowledge and resources.

Nevertheless when the opportunity came to use the power her captors had been forcing into her, she had not hesitated. Using all the skills and tactics taught to her by the Warlords of Okaara to fight for her freedom, she eventually escaped the ship before flying towards a nebula she'd overheard the ship would be passing by. It had been her intention to hide there until the Psion's gave up pursuit before navigating to the nearest world capable of offering safety, food and shelter. Sadly she had underestimated her value in the eyes of her former captors and so she had been forced to find out the hard way how to fight an armed spaceship on her own. She remembered several times making a mental note that should she ever see the Warlords of Okaara again she would ask them to introduce a new lesson based on her dire situation.

It had been a desperate fight and flight as she did her best to get out of range of their weapons while also trying to shoot out those same weapons with her own bolts of energy. The energy shields protecting the ship proved to be quite strong and it took more blasts than she would've liked to make a temporary hole in them, allowing her to destroy the weapon a dozen feet further in. The more time passed the more she became convinced that she had only exchanged death as a result of experimentation for death in the cold vacuum of space.

It had been then that a flash of light had blinded her and when her vision had returned she had found herself on this island, the Psion ship nowhere in sight.

The island looked like no place she had ever seen but she'd been relieved, if for no other reason than there was nothing here trying to kill her or experiment on her. She'd spent some time exploring the island to see if anyone lived here but, finding nothing, she'd decided to leave in order to look elsewhere for signs of life.

That had been when she'd discovered that any attempt to leave the island would only result in some force turning her around, causing her to return. Surprise had caused her to try again but that had transformed into irritation and then anger as she realized that her perceived freedom might be another form of imprisonment instead.

Now, though, she had another possibility to consider: a secret training ground for a grave threat to an entire world.

"If a general of Apokolips has indeed targeted your world then I will help you," she said, deciding that since she could not return to Tamaran then Xander's world could be home for now.

"Glad to hear it!" Xander said, looking quite happy to receive her aid. "Do you know anything about these Apokolips guys? All I got from the two guys that dropped me here is that they like destroying worlds."

"Not destroy. Transform. For something to be created something must first be destroyed," she corrected, remembering what she had learned on Okaara. "Apokolips is ruled by a dark god named Darkseid. He is without mercy and possesses power enough that few have the strength to challenge him and none thus far have shown themselves to possess enough to defeat him. He appears to be a conquering ruler expanding his territory with every year and enslaving the native inhabitants of the fallen worlds. While some worlds have managed to repel his efforts for a time, all have eventually fallen under his control."

"You said 'appears to be a conquering ruler'…what do you mean?" he asked, proving himself to be perceptive when it came to choice of words.

"When one conquers a territory, it is usually because it possesses something you desire or because you derive some measure of pleasure from the act. Darkseid has shown no sign of valuing those that he enslaves or possessing anything taken from those worlds," she replied, recalling what one of her instructors had told her. "As for gaining pleasure from combat, Darkseid almost never fights alongside his warriors, preferring to simply issue orders and then wait for the desired results. This has led some to believe that he is searching for something or perhaps clues to something he does desire but it well hidden."

"Does anyone know what this 'something' is?" he asked with interest in what she knew.

"X'hal believes that Darkseid seeks what she referred to as the Anti-life Equation. She described it as a transcendental mathematical formula capable of granting all who know it the ability to dominate the will of any sentient race. It implants the mathematical certainty that all life is hopeless along with freedom, plunging the victims into despair," she explained, still chilled by the very concept of such a power. "It is through this that the wielder gains the ability to seize control of entire planetary populations and make them mere extensions of the user's own will. Not everyone believes that something so dark and powerful exists but those who do make every effort to ensure that Darkseid never obtains it."

"Sounds like a good idea. It also means that if he's set his sights on Earth he thinks that he can get one step closer to the Anti-life equation," he said with an undercurrent of anger. "All he has to do is destroy everything and enslave everyone on the planet to do it! Well, not if I have anything to say about it!"

"It is very doubtful that either Darkseid or his forces will listen to reason. To them we are all lesser beings to be trampled underfoot," she said with a shake of her head, dismissing the idea of protecting the planet Earth through diplomacy.

Xander looked at her for a moment as though she had said something odd but then dismissed the thought as unimportant.

"Well, if the guys that dropped me here are right then there's at least a one in two chance we can defeat Stepponwolf when he comes. Maybe even better," Xander said, getting up from where he'd sat down to explain what he knew. "After all, before our team didn't exist. We train hard and when the time comes, we'll beat him for sure."

It encouraged her to know that she would be fighting alongside someone willing to be optimistic even in the face of fighting a general of Apokolips along with the accompanying parademons. She only prayed that when they succeeded in defeating Stepponwolf once more that it would not result in provoking the wrath of the tyrant Darkseid. It was a fact that power was deciding factor on where one ranked amongst the denizens of Apokolips and none there had more power than its merciless ruler.

Should the dark god choose to take offense at the repeated defeat of his general, an invasion force numbering in the thousands accompanied by more generals could very well be sent to Earth.

In such a situation victory would be impossible for it would require Earth to possess an army of defenders of formidable strength all its own to repel the invaders.

"So… when you were looking around the island, did you see any buildings? Anyplace to rest between training sessions?" Xander asked in a way that implied he had not seen anything from atop the tree she had discovered him on earlier.

"No I did not. While I did not search this island thoroughly, if there are any buildings or structures then they are likely concealed inside the denser areas of the forest," she replied, recalling nothing that she could call a structure created by intelligent beings.

"Figures. They recruit us to help them fight off an invasion but don't bother to even give us a place to sleep," he grumbled with a look of dissatisfaction. "Well then I guess we should probably see to that first before we get to any training. We're going to need someplace to sleep and take shelter when the weather gets bad."

A sensible course of action and her instructors had taught her how to fashion crude but effective shelters using only what occurred in the natural world.

True, that had been on Okaara and the more well-known worlds but she was certain that there would be certain universal consistencies on every planet capable of supporting humanoid life.

They would be fine.

_**Two Hours Later**_

_**Xander's POV**_

_I definitely should've paid more attention all those times Uncle Rory took me camping,_ he thought as he pushed over another tree. _It just didn't sound important at the time. I was a city boy and I didn't plan on living out in the woods when I could have a house or an apartment._

In any case he and Kori had settled on building a VERY crude log cabin and that required knocking down at least fifty or sixty decent sized trees. From there they'd had to take all the branches off and chop them to the desired lengths before beginning assembly. They weren't experts at this, even Kori's survival training didn't get very complex or detailed, but with a little common sense he figured they could manage. First they'd lay down a set of logs to be the floor and buried them three quarters or so in the ground so they wouldn't roll away but rather stay firmly in place. He'd even added some decent sized rocks and placed them around the edges to make sure rain didn't dig the logs out over time. After that they'd buried the logs that'd make up the wall around the perimeter as deep as they needed to be so that they couldn't be pushed over unless someone actually put their backs into trying. Maybe they'd end up carving the ends into points both so they'd go into the ground easier and make putting the roof up easier. He remembered Jesse getting this toy log kit one Christmas and every 'log' was expertly carved so that they'd all fit together like the wheels in an old watch.

Sure, this wasn't the same thing by any stretch of the imagination but he had hope that with a little scraping and some careful use of superhuman strength they could make the logs fit together.

Maybe.

While he worked he tried to figure out what sort of training plan he'd use to get himself up to where he'd need to be in order to fight Stepponwolf. It wasn't easy because the only Dragonball episodes he saw were the dubbed versions and they hadn't really gone into all that much depth when it came to what Goku's early training consisted of. All he could recall was the use of weighted clothing, lots of physical conditioning and going through a series of techniques in a way that reminded him of shadow boxing. He could feel some info in his head that definitely belonged to Goku but it was incomplete, to say nothing of completely random in terms of content. Maybe with some time he could sift through it all to find anything useful but he very much doubted that it'd be a step by step lesson plan for getting as strong as Goku was by the time he reached planet Namek.

For one thing he had no gravity chamber to train in and he doubted he'd be able to get the same workout even if he piled everything on the island onto his back.

About the only thing he did have going for him was the fact that with Kori there he'd at least have a sparring partner to fight with once he got his body up to snuff. She was a trained warrior and probably knew more about the particulars of how to be a professional warrior than he did. She could probably give him tips on how to get stronger and be someone he could test some of the techniques he had bouncing around his head on without having to worry about accidentally hurting her. Once he had all the techniques he had in his head down pat, perhaps she'd show him a few of the moves she'd learned on Okaara to help fill the gaps he'd probably have in his defense and offense.

Once they learned all they could learn from each other, it'd likely be sparring and training right up until the end, with the only breaks being for food and sleep.

_Not exactly how I pictured the next twenty years of my life,_ he thought as he picked up the fallen tree. _Survival is a powerful motivator, though._

Walking the tree over to the stack that he and Kori had made, he could see that they were making decent progress, all things considered. Almost twenty trees so far and that meant at most forty more to go before they could begin crafting it into a livable home to sleep out of. He still wished that the two assholes that'd recruited him had done SOMETHING to prepare the island for them even if it was just a pile of camping equipment you could get from any major store. Some tents, some sleeping bags, a few changes of clothing and the right gear for getting their own food would've been just fine. If a log cabin big enough for the team to live out had been waiting for them he would have been quite happy, especially if it'd been fully furnished with furniture.

Instead they'd been dumped in the middle of a deserted island with no artificial structures and left to their own devices to construct a dwelling.

_If one of the other team members turns out to be a whiny, stuck up bitch worse than Cordy, I'm definitely going to call bullshit on the whole Armageddon story,_ he thought, setting down the tree before turning around to find a suitable next 'victim'. _Only in hell could I get stuck on an island with someone who's worse than Cordy in a bad mood with no way of going 'anywhere but here'._

Hearing a groan he turned towards the source to see Kori stretching a bit to get the exertion kinks out of her body and immediately his brain paused.

Paused then replaced 'hell' with 'purgatory' since if he remembered the important bits of the bible right, purgatory was the place souls too dirty with sin spent a few centuries before going on to heaven. Basically it was a place where, if you didn't qualify for hell but weren't good enough to get into heaven, you spent a few centuries as punishment to wash the sin off of you.

Why did he think this? Well, he was still a teenage guy, with all the usual assortment of likes and dislikes someone his age would have, right? One of those likes was the appreciation for beautiful women, that appreciation only going up if they were wearing clothes that hugged the curves and were a bit short on coverage. In Kori's case she was definitely beautiful, curvy and her outfit while definitely made for combat was in no way tent-like or loose enough to leave you wondering about what lay beneath. Also, while he was fairly certain that her stretching was completely neutral in nature, he couldn't help but start sliding into the gutter a bit at how alluring it made her look.

As soon as she opened her eyes to look at him, though, he turned away and scrambled for some safe topic to talk about to cover up where his brain had been going.

"So… what're your people like, Kori?" he asked while putting more effort into finding a suitable tree.

"My people are a peaceful race and allow our emotions to guide us, unlike most other races where reason is dominant," she replied, pausing in her stretching to answer him. "Also, unlike other races, we have always worked to live side by side with the natural world instead of forcing the creations of industry upon our planet."

"Sounds like a paradise," he said, trying to picture a world so peaceful and beautiful.

"It was… until the forces of the Citadel attacked," she said, a sad look marring her otherwise beautiful features. "Before then my people had never known war. However we were quick learners and managed to repel their armies for a long time until our king was forced to bargain for Tamaran's safety."

He could tell that there was a story to be had there and not the sort that would put a smile on most people's faces.

He wouldn't pry, though.

They were nowhere near close enough for him to have the right to know more and, to be perfectly honest, it didn't have anything to do with their mission to defeat Stepponwolf. Maybe if Kori started showing signs of mental baggage and difficulties related to what happened to her home planet he'd ask but not before then.

"What about your world, Xander? What is Earth like?" Kori asked, no doubt wishing to think about anything other than what'd happened to her world.

"Well, I won't say it's as good as yours," he replied, deciding to be honest rather than omit the bad parts. "The planet's not united. It's divided into more countries than I know about, with each one having its own culture and beliefs. Sure, some countries have alliances with each other, treaties and stuff, but others just want to be left alone or are so evil they should be defeated in every way. War, crime, famine, poverty and more exist on Earth. We might've come a long way from when we lived in caves and wore animal skins but we're still a long way from learning to get along with one another in peace."

He could tell that this was disappointing to Kori and he found it a little disappointing as well. The human race had ten thousand years of recorded history and even after all that time they still didn't seem to be all that much closer to global peace and harmony. If it wasn't certain nations asking questions like 'what is in it for me', it was the countries ruled by tyrants and despots refusing to share anything with anyone. Add to them terrorists and criminals and you had more than enough disruptive elements to keep true peace from becoming a reality anytime soon.

"Still, it's not all bad. There are good people, too. People like my friends," he said, smiling at the good times he'd had over the years with his friends. "People who care about each other, love each other, have fun with one another and try to make the world a better place than it was before. Hell, there are people who just want to live their lives as best they can without changing anything."

"Such contradiction exists on your world. It is no wonder that Stepponwolf has set his sights on Earth," Kori said, sounding reassured that the planet she was being asked to save wasn't all dark.

"Personally I think it's proof positive that anything's possible on Earth," he said with a confident, lopsided grin. "Two things that should've destroyed the planet ten times over the second they met still existing along with Earth. If that can happen, who knows what else'll happen."

"And it's for those possibilities that you fight to protect your world," Kori said with a smile as a flicker of that confidence appeared in her emerald eyes.

"Yep! There might be a million to one odds against us managing anything big while I'm still breathing but if we can even manage to take one step forward, it'll be worth it," he said, meaning every word he spoke. "I figure that's the problem a lot of people who want to change the world have: They want to get it all done while they're still alive. They don't get it that big changes take time and trying to force them to happen quicker'll just make a mess of things."

"Then I look forward to placing a pebble in the foundation of a brighter and better Earth," Kori said before turning away to resume gathering the trees they'd need for their new home.

_As far as getting to know each other chats go, I think that went pretty good,_ he thought as he did the same. _We're on the same page and, once she gets to see Earth for herself, she'll find other reasons to want to protect it._

Sure, it was nice that she wanted to protect the planet just because of some things he'd said but in his opinion, in order to really go all out, you needed something stronger as well as more personal. With those things you could dig deeper into your soul for the power you needed and work through whatever injuries you had and the pain they caused.

Considering what was coming down the metaphorical highway, they'd need plenty of both advantages if they were going to bring down Stepponwolf.


	2. How to make the most of very little

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted materials contained herein. They are the rightful property of their respective creators and/or associated companies. I make no profit from this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this in the future. I write because it's fun and because there are those who enjoy reading my stories. Therefore no lawsuits or similar legal action please because I can promise you that whatever you get from me won't cover even a third of your legal fees.

* * *

_**Three Days Later**_

_**The Island Formerly Ruled by Circe**_

_**Koriand**__**'**__**r**__**'**__**s POV**_

"It's finally done!" she declared with a smile of accomplishment as she looked at the home that had been created.

"Yep! Took us a few tries but we managed to get it to work," Xander said, looking satisfied with their work himself.

She had never tried to make a home out of so many trees, even during her training on Okaara. When her teachers there had taught lessons about surviving far away from civilization, the shelters they had taught her how to make were simple structures intended for only one. Essentially branches with a few leaf branches tied between them to keep out the rain. This had been a decidedly larger undertaking and it had taken the both of them three days in order to solve all the flaws and make something that would work. Both of them had tested the durability of their new home with what could be considered light taps until they were satisfied that even the strongest wind wouldn't blow it over. It'd taken some work to figure out a way to seal up all the gaps between the logs so that when it rained the water wouldn't trickle through but some trial and error with what was available proved successful. They both figured that it would need to be reapplied every month but that would be easy enough.

In between making their home, their 'log cabin' as Xander called it, they had also successfully managed to locate a source of clean water and confirmed that there were wild animals to hunt.

In short, the basic necessities for surviving in the wild had been met.

So now the time had come to train.

"So what do you wish to do first?" she asked, turning to fully face Xander.

"Now? Now I start my physical conditioning training while you go through whatever your normal workout routine is," he replied before walking over to where the top half of his uniform rested on the ground. "I only started fighting for real a little over a year ago and, even with the upgrade I got from the Halloween, I'm nowhere near your level. Before we can train together I need to work hard to get up to your level."

"You are not that far behind in terms of physical prowess," she said, recalling how he had managed to lift the trees with no sign of strain.

"Nice of you to say so but if half the new memories bouncing around my head are good, I've got a lot of training to do before I can make the most of what I've got now," he said, pulling on his top on. "Good thing wanting to save an entire planet and the people I love who're on it makes for great motivation."

"Indeed it does," she said with an encouraging nod.

A few moments later she was by herself and the time had come to resume the training she'd begun so long ago on Okaara. If what Xander had told her was true then the beings that had asked him to help save the planet Earth had given them twenty years to prepare. If they believed such a significant amount of time was required, then Stepponwolf truly had to be one of Apokolips' elite generals. In all likelihood he would be on par with one of her instructors on Okaara and she had never before been able to defeat one, or even force them to take her seriously when they sparred with one another.

If she was going to be of any help in the battle to come, that would have to change and, like her teachers had repeatedly told her, she would start with the basics.

Everything, from the simplest techniques to the most infamous ones, began with the basics and evolved over time into what they were now.

Master the basics and you take your first step towards both understanding as well as mastering the more complex techniques.

Taking to the air, she began to look for a suitable training ground.

As she had found out when she'd first arrived on the island, it possessed a wide variety of terrain, ranging from forests to grass covered meadows, rocky outcroppings and more. It implied that their benefactors wanted them to be able to fight effectively in a variety of environments but it also made her think that they didn't know where Stepponwolf would attack. This would make countering him difficult since they would leave them waiting to find out where he was so they would know where they needed to go. In essence, they would be reacting rather than proactively striking at the general of Apokolips before the villain could achieve any of his objectives.

Given that the failure of their efforts could mean the end of an entire world, she knew that the team would need to discuss how best to minimize the disadvantage this fact represented.

Soon she found a clearing that looked good to her and, once she sat down, she began practicing the techniques her teachers had first started her on all those years ago. Focusing on her memories, she put all her effort into performing each move precisely as her instructor had demonstrated it to her without the slightest of deviation. It wasn't easy since it was a common fallacy of any being to taint their own recollections with their personal opinions and points of view. As a result, what one remembered was not necessarily EXACTLY what happened.

Still, short of her instructors from Okaara coming to the island, it was the best she could do.

Hours passed by as she practiced each technique, scrutinizing each for flaws before moving on to the next one. Just as her instructors never gave an inch in their criticisms and pointing out of her mistakes, she did not allow herself any leniency if she detected a mistake.

She would ascend to a new level of power, of skill and of determination.

When she faced Stepponwolf and his forces, she would do so without fear and with a resolve that not even X'hal herself could break.

For the next six months the two warriors, the mystically created Saiyan and the Tamaranian princess, trained their bodies using whatever means they thought would prove effective. It was difficult since, along with forgetting to provide a building for them to live out of, their recruiters hadn't provided any training equipment whatsoever. Not weights, training dummies, nothing! As a result they'd been forced to use only what they could find on the island and since neither of them were craftsmen anything they made was unbelievably crude. Boulders became weights and tree branches became a means of doing things like chin-ups and stomach crunches. When the first became too light to be effective they had to find something larger and if there didn't exist something larger, Kori just blasted what they needed off the side of the small mountain that existed on the island.

For speed training it came down to running the entire perimeter of the island and then trying to beat your previous time by at least ten to twenty seconds. When that got boring they added in obstacles or conditions that had to be met, like using the trees to get around without touching the ground. For Kori, though, it was more along the lines of flying through the forest while maneuvering around the branches and not making anything more than the leaves flutter. She also did weight training with him but her boulders were definitely bigger than his, even if it was only by a bit.

Mix in practicing what techniques and moves they knew and they eventually were forced to begin some light sparring sessions in order to get anywhere with their training. For Xander, getting into the best possible physical condition he could manage was only part of the equation, with the rest being mastering the moves for both the turtle school of martial arts as well as King Kai's teachings. The Kai of the North's teachings were harder since he wasn't doing them under ten times Earth's normal gravity but Xander did the best he could.

However it was a couple days past the sixth month though that something changed.

The next member of their team arrived.

* * *

_**The Sixth Month of Training**_

_**Northern Side of the Island Formerly Ruled by Circe**_

_**Xander**__**'**__**s POV**_

"You feel that?" he asked, pausing in the middle of his sparring session with Kori when his fledgling ki sensing ability pinged, indicating something new had appeared on the island.

"I… think so?" Kori replied, looking like she was still having a little trouble sensing ki.

It had been one of the new things he'd added to their usual training regime about a month ago. While working to master what they knew individually was important, it'd occurred to him that they might stand a much better chance against Stepponwolf if they shared what they knew. Sure, there were some biological differences between the two of them but their martial arts styles should be learnable, since they had the same kind of limbs and ki training could be learned by anyone. So Kori had begun teaching him the combat styles she'd been instructed in on the planet Okaara and he'd done his best to show her what he'd learned from Goku's memories. He wasn't a great teacher and the fragmented memories left sizeable gaps in both the turtle school as well as what King Kai had taught the simpleton Saiyan, but he liked to think that they were making decent progress.

Ki sensing, though, was proving to be something of a hurdle for Kori and that was understandable. She had no trouble sensing the energy she used to fly or fire off her green blasts of energy, but once his own ki sensing ability had been developed enough he could tell she wasn't firing ki energy. Because she had two types of energy in her body, it'd been tough for him to get her to separate ki from the energy her body naturally absorbed and utilized but he'd managed.

_It'll still probably take the rest of the year before she has the hang of it,_ he thought as he extended his own senses towards where the source of the ping was.

From what he could tell it definitely wasn't an animal, since he'd gotten pretty good at detecting the various kinds of animals that lived on the island and their ki felt different, more primal, than what he was feeling from the new arrival. He might've said that this meant it was intelligent/sentient but then he'd only had him and Kori to work with in that department, so he could be mistaken. Kori was an alien and, thanks to the Halloween spell, so was he, at least from a physical standpoint.

_Best not to jump to conclusions, _he thought. "We should probably go check it out. Could be a teammate or an intruder."

"Good idea. Neither would be wise to leave alone for too long," Kori said as she rose into the air a good twenty feet before flying towards where the ping was.

Showoff.

Despite the dedication he'd been putting into his training, he still had not grown strong or skilled enough to be able to use his ki to fly like Goku could. Sure, in the beginning he'd been forced to use the Flying Nimbus in order to get someplace fast but by the time he'd faced off against the Ginyu Force the hero had been flying about without a problem. As a result he was now forced to chase after Kori's airborne form the old fashioned way: he ran!

Feeling the air flow through his now gravity defying hair, he couldn't help but smile a bit at how different he was from the simple Californian teenager he used to be. Right now he was running at a speed comparable to most city vehicles, speed limit and all! It was GREAT! With this kind of speed he could now outrun any one hundred percent human on the planet Earth, something no one else could claim. Strength and reflexes were of a similar higher level than could be achieved by normal human beings.

All in all he felt like he could probably kick Buffy's ass if he wanted to.

However his joy at how far he'd come was tempered by the fact that he wasn't anywhere near where he wanted to be or where he suspected he'd need to be. Anyone capable of bringing about the end of an entire planet was on a whole other level of power when compared to the demons that chose to come to Sunnydale. Still, he was sure that if he did all he could in the next nineteen years or so, he'd be ready to at the very least tip the scales further in favor of the planet Earth.

And at the very most make Stepponwolf realize that Earth was not the vulnerable target the monster probably thought that it was.

After a few minutes he made it to the area of rocky outcroppings that existed on the island and where he and Kori tended to harvest their 'weights' from. He hoped that if the new arrival was a new teammate that they hadn't been dropped from a significant height because then they might be dead unless they were surprisingly durable. Leaping into the air, he decided to make this pseudo-training by hopping from the tallest mounds of stone one after another as he continued to advance. To make it even harder he made it a personal rule to never remain in contact with any of the mounds for longer than two seconds. It made sense since in a fight against powerful beings they sometimes possessed speed to match their brute strength. As such remaining in one spot for longer than two seconds would just up the risk factor since stationary targets were often easier to hit than moving ones.

Plus, in such an environment, firm footing and traction wasn't a guarantee so that upped the difficulty nicely.

Five minutes later he got close enough to the source of the ping on his ki sense and high enough that he'd be able to see it half decently. What he saw was a woman with long black hair, skin that made him think of either white/black mixed ancestry, or maybe Indian, and clothes that were definitely native to Earth. A black shirt that left the midriff bare and sleeves that only went to the elbow combined with normal looking blue jeans made it clear she was from Earth.

Still, he didn't let his guard drop completely since just because she looked to be from Earth that didn't necessarily mean that she was from HIS Earth.

Space didn't seem to be a problem for the beings that recruited him since, according to Kori, she'd never heard of Earth, meaning it had to be pretty far from where she'd last remembered being. If space wasn't an issue then maybe alternate realities or timelines weren't out of the question either. It was hard to figure out the limits of his recruiters when he didn't really know who they were aside from being deities of some sort. Considering there seemed to be gods and goddesses for just about everything, depending on the pantheon you looked at, there was no telling where this newest teammate had come from.

All he felt strongly enough about was that she'd likely come from a time period within ten to fifteen years of his own if her clothes were any indicator.

Pushing a bit of strength into his legs he leapt the last bit of distance between him and his new teammate while Kori gracefully descended to land by his side. This startled the newbie, making him wonder if he'd somehow been a special case with the recruiters in how much they'd revealed about the coming crisis. Seemed like bad planning to him since the more info they had on Stepponwolf and the forces the evil alien would bring with him, the better they could plan to defeat him. How did the guy like to fight? What abilities did he have? Did he use any weapons? Were his minions automated machines or living beings? Neither he or Kori knew the answers to these questions.

Just the end result if they failed to defeat him.

"Hey! Welcome… to Fantasy Island!" he said with a smirk as he remembered the TV show he'd occasionally watched with Willow and Jesse.

Right up until Willow had overheard one of Jesse's more gutter worthy fantasies that their friend would've liked if the fictional island had been real. It'd definitely been one of Jesse's more… kinky… teenage fantasies, even by his standards, but it'd definitely crossed the line with Willow and pretty much made the show unwatchable so long as Willow was present.

"Nice try but you're no Mister Roarke," the woman said, catching the reference. "Now where the hell are we?"

"You mean you weren't briefed?" he asked the woman who looked to be only a couple of years older than him.

"Not really. Some relative of Puck's showed up saying that the planet was in trouble and I'd been picked to help out," the twenty-something woman replied with a shake of her head. "I told him that I'd be glad to help but before I could tell him that Goliath could help too he dropped me here."

"Sounds about right," he said, feeling a little better than Kori's departure but still less than his own. "Basically you've been drafted by gods to fight some big bad that's gonna show up in twenty years. Until then we're to train our asses off here to get as strong and as badass as we can."

"And what? We don't get a say in things?" the woman asked, sounding like she didn't like not getting a choice in the matter.

"In my case I agreed to fight as long as the gods I talked to agreed to look after and help my friends while I was gone," he replied, crossing his arms over his chest. "Kori didn't get any explanation, though, or choice. One minute she was in space the next she was here on the island."

"However if they had explained to me what was at stake, I would have agreed to help," Kori commented to show that she was not being held here against her will.

"In your case, you did tell the guy you'd help, didn't you?" he asked rhetorically, pointing out the important part of her recruitment. "So it's not like you don't want to be here. It's more like he didn't give you time to pack or invite along a friend."

"I guess… it still would've been nicer to give me some time to tie up some loose ends," the woman said, grudgingly conceding the point. "Captain Chavez is NOT going to like me pulling a disappearing act and my family is going to go nuts worrying about me."

"Yyyeeeeaaahh, I can see how that'd be a problem," he said realizing that, unlike him and Kori, the lady had a life with obligations that she'd been whisked away from, "Well, maybe the guy was thoughtful enough to come up with a cover story for you. I don't know if we're gonna get strong enough to kick a god's ass but the guy has to know that he'll get better results from us if we're in a good mood."

"What kind of cover story explains why they won't see or hear from me for twenty years?!" the woman asked with a bit of incredulity at the statement.

"Well, what was your job before getting brought here?" he asked, needing some info to work with.

"I'm a detective second grade with the NYPD," the woman replied, pulling out an official looking wallet-badge combo from her back pocket.

"Maybe he'll pull a man in black routine and say that you stumbled into a classified federal operation against a major crime organization and now you're a crucial part of it now," he said, literally thinking it up as it came to him. "Can't leave until it's done and all that. Probably wouldn't be hard for him to magic up some official looking documents to back his story up."

"What if they want to talk to me or send me letters?" the woman asked, pointing out that her family and friends wouldn't like being cut off from her entirely.

"Ummm… well, I dunno. Maybe when they pop in to see how we're doing we can convince'em to let you send a letter or make a phone call?" he replied, figuring that their 'employers' would want to see how their investment was coming along. "As long as you don't give away what we're doing or where we are, it shouldn't be a problem."

He could tell that this wasn't as good as the woman wanted but Kori had already proven that you couldn't fly off the island and there was no technology there, so remaining in constant contact with loved ones was impossible without the help of their 'employers'. He made sure to make a mental note to talk to them about it when they showed up.

"I guess we'll wait and see then," the woman said, nodding her head a bit. "By the way, the name's Elisa Maza."

"Xander Harris," he said, jerking a thumb at himself. "Welcome to the team."

"Koriand'r of Tamaran," Kori said with a smile. "Pleased to meet you."

And with that a new member of their team had arrived to train with them so that when the fated day arrived they would be ready.

Though he had to wonder looking at her; what skills or abilities did she bring to the team?

* * *

_**Late Afternoon**_

_**The Log Cabin Constructed by Xander and Koriand'**__**r**_

_**Elisa Maza**__**'**__**s POV**_

_You've certainly gotten yourself into a mess this time, Maza,_ she thought, looking about the log cabin that she'd be calling home for the next twenty years.

It was enough to make her wonder when exactly her life had gotten this strange and after a moment's thought she had her answer.

It'd been a little over a year ago when she'd answered the call about a serious disturbance at the top of the Eyrie Building that her life had taken a turn for the weird. Before then she had been an ordinary police detective doing her best to protect the people of New York City while also taking down the scumbags who broke the law. Her career had experienced both ups as well as downs, its victories as well as its losses, but it hadn't been anything that she hadn't been prepared for by the Academy.

That had all changed when she'd chosen to sneak into the Eyrie building to see what David Xanatos was hiding. It was that night that she'd met Goliath and his clan of gargoyles, resulting in discovering a world she'd had no clue had existed previously. Intelligent beings that weren't human but in some ways were more honorable than the people she met every day. Magic being more than David Copperfield and vanishing monuments. All that and more caused her image of the world to grow until she began to feel like she'd been growing up in a bubble before that life changing night.

Regardless, she'd refused to retreat to what could be considered 'normal' and instead chose to stride forward alongside Goliath's clan to protect the city along with each other.

This…this was a new brand of strange and she couldn't help but think that she might've bitten off more than she could safely chew. For all the amazing things that she'd encountered since meeting Goliath, she was still just an ordinary human, a normal detective, and yet she had agreed to fight against a threat to the entire planet. Thanks to her being sent here straight from her apartment, she didn't even have her sidearm, leaving her only with her hand-to-hand combat training.

Somehow she didn't think that was going to cut it.

"Wondering what you're role in all this is?" a voice asked, causing her to turn around.

It was Xander.

The first impression she'd had of him was a consummate joker who didn't take life too seriously and always did his best to keep everyone's spirits up. After their initial greeting, though, she'd come to discover that he had some steel in his spine and, despite the stakes of what they were getting involved in, she got the impression that it was nothing new for him.

She'd have to ask him why that was.

"The thought had crossed my mind," she said, deciding to be honest. "This is shaping up to be a fight straight out of the comic books and everyone knows beat cops get wiped out pretty easily in those."

"You got a point there," Xander said, scratching the back of his head with a grin. "Still, there is a way around that if you're interested."

"What do you mean?" she asked, curious about how her powerlessness could be bypassed.

"Well, there's a form of fighting I'm training to master that anyone can learn as long as they're willing to put in the hours of training it needs," Xander replied, dropping his hand to his side. "It's basically where you can control your inner ki energy to fly, shoot energy blasts and enhance your body to do a lot more than it could before."

"You mean like the ki in martial arts?" she asked, a little dubious about what she was being told.

If she remembered what her hand-to-hand combat instructor had told her at the academy, Ki was the vital energy that a person had inside of them that if controlled allowed someone to have an unbendable arm or an unliftable body. If you took a look at how it was depicted in movies and comics, though, ki was an energy that turned someone superhuman, allowing them to do things beyond what anyone could consider normal. Her instructor had only known that much because his father had been something of an expert in the old ways of training and had passed it down to him. The teacher hadn't really believed some of the more fantastic stories his father had told him but did believe that with training it was possible to increase ones natural vitality to a respectable degree.

"Kinda. Except in this case if you train hard enough and long enough, you could demolish an entire army all by yourself," Xander replied with a smirk that almost look condescendingly cocky. "Hell, Vegeta was able to blow up a small planet with a strong ki blast!"

"Vegeta?" she asked, feeling like she'd heard the name before.

"A character from a cartoon," he replied as his smirk faded. "He was an alien prince of a race called Saiyans."

That name, Saiyans, was enough to trigger a memory of the time she'd gone to visit her sister at the university she was attending a couple of months before meeting Goliath. Beth had said it was a cartoon from Japan and her little sister had been hooked on it enough to decorate her dorm room with posters centered on it. Naturally she'd made fun of her sister for still watching cartoons at her age but Beth had taken that as a personal challenge to get her hooked on the show as well. More to humor her little sister than anything else she'd agreed to sit down and watch a few episodes to see if they could prove Beth right.

The show had been more entertaining than she'd thought but she hadn't gotten hooked on it.

"My sister Beth watched the show and I caught a few episodes, but my memory's a bit fuzzy," she said, dropping that little tidbit.

"Well, the bottom line is that if you're interested I can help train you to use ki," Xander said, sidestepping the predictable summary of the show's plot. "You'll be stronger, faster, more agile, able to fly and fire off all kinds of energy blasts. You probably won't get as strong as I will in twenty years but I can probably get you strong enough to hold your own against Stepponwolf."

She could turn into someone straight out of the comic books? There was only one answer she could give to that.

"When do we start?" she asked a tingle in her mind at how far she could possibly go.

"First thing tomorrow morning. Better to make sure you get a full night's rest," he replied, going over to a pile of rolled up furs that'd been in the corner of the room. "You're going to need every scrap of energy you can save up to make it through training tomorrow."

With those words he picked up one of the rolls of fur, one that looked like it'd been skinned off of an animal recently, and tossed it to her. Catching it, she unfurled it and from what she could see whoever had skinned the animal and then properly prepared the fur for use had done a fairly respectable job. It looked like they'd been forced to use improvised tools but it'd make for a decent enough blanket for tonight.

Looking out the crude window that'd been made in the wall of the log cabin, she could see that the sun was beginning to set and soon night would fall. She didn't know how long the days were here and a part of her felt a bit off since she usually worked the night shift at the precinct, but if she was going to be doing some intense training more sleep would be necessary. Turning from the window, she began to look about the interior of the cabin for a good place to lay down…

…when an unnatural heat began to throb beneath her skin.

She didn't know what it was and had nothing similar she could compare it to. Throughout her long relationship with Goliath and his clan she had experienced many things firsthand but nothing had ever felt like this. She opened her mouth to say something to Xander but the words were stolen from her mouth as a spike of pain caused her to double over just shy of falling to the ground. She was no stranger to pain, it was something that you learned to manage during your career as a police officer, but this was something different. Even as she recovered from the terrible upsurge in pain, she could feel the heat from the beginning start to spread like an injection through her veins before seeping into the very marrow of her bones.

Then the changes began.

She knew they were changes because she could feel the bones shifting into new positions, merging and the flesh around them flowing to accommodate the changes. Four fingers became three. Five toes became three.

Then the changes became more substantial.

The feet that had once been human shifted until it was no longer possible for her heel to touch the ground, forcing her to change how she stood to stay on her feet. Bone spikes popped out of her knees and elbows but the bleeding didn't last long since the flesh quickly adapted to make it as though the spikes had always been there. She could FEEL her canine teeth growing into fangs and the position of the rest of her teeth changing in order to allow those changes to come together smoothly, like they had when they were human in nature.

However the big finish put all that'd come before it to shame.

Like a snake slithering towards prey a tail long enough so that the bottom third could rest easily on the ground surged out of her back a little above her ass crack. Oddly enough she was peripherally aware that, instead of hearing the sound of tearing denim, the new appendage flowed into form without interference.

Then, like someone pulling the cord on a parachute, wings that bore a strong resemblance to those often depicted as belonging to Pterosaurs in Hollywood movies sprung from her shoulder blades. A few seconds at full extension and they fell into a more relaxed position but they were about the only thing that were relaxed.

The fear, the pain and the alien sensations churned within her until she gave into an instinct she knew she'd never had before and the roar of a jungle cat escaped from her open mouth.

Then, as though it had happened hours ago, the pain vanished, leaving only an ache that went from the tips of her toes all the way to the very ends of her hair. Panting from the sheer changes she had just been put through, only her sheer determination kept her on her feet but, once she was sure that the pain was not going to come back, she began trying to recover from her ordeal. Steps to steady her breathing, sitting down to ease the strain on muscles she didn't know if she could trust yet and ignoring the clues that hinted at what had just happened. Right now the most important thing was not acting like a chicken running around with its head cut off. Only once she was strong enough both mentally as well as physically would she face what'd happened to her head on, along with what it meant for her future.

"Huh. So this is why you got picked for the team," Xander said, not sounding very shocked or afraid about what'd happened. "Looks like flight, claws and probably super strength. A bit more exotic looking than Kori but kinda cool, too."

"Thanks, Xander," she groaned, now that ignorance was no longer possible. "Really."

She'd get him back for this.

* * *

_**A Few Nights Later **_

_**Koriand**__**'**__**r**__**'**__**s POV**_

"She is doing quite well, don't you think?" she asked, looking up as Elisa glided through the air.

"If by well you mean like a drunken eagle, then yeah, she's doing GREAT," Xander replied, looking up just as she was.

She… reluctantly admitted that their airborne teammate's flying was not completely steady and there were a few times so far that she thought the woman had misjudged the placement of her wings. However the fact that Elisa was still in the air and had not plummeted to the ground was to be commended nonetheless. She remembered well the first attempts that she and her siblings had made to fly when they were children, with each of them at least a handful of times crashing into the ground from various distances and speeds. It was even more impressive when you took into account the fact that, according to her newest teammate, she had little prior experience with this form. Still it had been agreed by all three of them that, before Elisa could begin training to get stronger, the enforcer of the laws of New York must first fully understand her transitory body.

It had been something of a surprise when she'd rushed into the cabin after hearing a beastial roar to find a being that resembled Elisa but possessed several attributes that the woman had not mere minutes before. Once she was sure that it was indeed Elisa, the woman explained to both her and Xander what her new form was, along with what had likely happened to her. Apparently where she was from there was a race of noble beings known as gargoyles which existed alongside humans and another race referred to as Oberon's Children. They were protectors who guarded wherever they considered home, as well as those who chose to live alongside them in peace, from all that threatened them both. However, due to the darker emotions of humans, gargoyles had been rendered an endangered species, with Elisa knowing one of the few surviving clans.

One of the surviving gargoyles though had declared herself an enemy of the human race and had been working for centuries to wipe out every single human.

It was during the attempt by this gargoyle to use a member of Oberon's Children to further her goals that the woman received a 'gift'. During the day the female gargoyle would be completely human in body but from sunset to sunrise she would regain her natural gargoyle form. Elisa had speculated that since 'Demona' would never willingly or knowingly wish to be made human even temporarily, the magical gift giver had twisted the evil woman's words to allow for such a present.

The important part, though, was that Elisa had never received such a gift from the child of Oberon to the best of her recollection. The only other time she had been a gargoyle was temporarily when the magical being had twisted the words of one of Demona's wishes in order to spare the honorable woman's life. The transformation had only lasted hours before the same being had reversed all that he'd done and disappeared to 'take a llloooonnngg nap'.

Xander had speculated that the deities that were responsible for their recruitment had something to do with it since an ordinary human enforcer of the law would be of little help against Stepponwolf. Elisa had taken offense to that but the young man had been quick to explain. A normal human versed only in combat against other normal humans could not possibly pose a threat to a threat capable of bringing about the end of the world, even if they were well armed with conventional human weapons. Only those capable of feats beyond what could be considered 'normal' would stand any chance at all and only those who succeeded in reaching the upper levels of superhuman could achieve victory. As such, it was only natural that the divine beings that had recruited them would give Elisa something to give her a fighting chance in the battle to come.

"How long before you begin instructing us in ki usage?" she asked, turning to look at her male teammate.

"Pretty soon," he replied, turning to look at her. "Both of us have strengthened our bodies enough for it and, from what Elisa showed us yesterday, a gargoyle is already pretty strong with a ki to match. Even if she didn't have this new form I probably could've gotten her pretty strong by the time twenty years was up. With it and mixing in other training, it will make all of us a force to be reckoned with."

Indeed Xander had told her a few weeks before Elisa had arrived that it was his intention to teach her how to utilize her ki like he could in order to enhance her own abilities while also giving her new ones. As far as he was concerned, why should they just stick to their own individual abilities when they could share what each individual member contributed to the team to make the whole stronger? Xander would share his ki training, she would share both her aerial combat knowledge as well as the forms of Okaara hand-to-hand combat she knew and Elisa would pass on her detective skills. None of them knew precisely how large their team was intended to become but, as new allies arrived, they would add what they knew to the pool of skills to be shared.

They both knew that some skills or abilities would be impossible to share for one reason or another but, by sharing what they could, they could all become stronger.

"I admit that I am curious about how it could be different from channeling the energies my body naturally absorbs," she said, turning her gaze back to Elisa, who was attempting to soar higher on a current of air.

"Well, if you look at it one way, your green energy is power produced by your body but ki is power produced by your soul," he said, trying to put what he knew into words. "Sure, there's a connection between the two, but you can have the strongest body in the galaxy and not be able to fire off even the smallest ki blast. The toughest part will probably be figuring out how to tap into one without tapping into the other."

"Would it not be to our benefit if I could use both at the same time?" she asked since it was only logical that double the strength was more powerful than a singular strength.

"Yeah, but that'd have to wait. You'd need to make sure your body could handle the strain of using both at the same time," he replied, sounding like he knew what he was talking about. "Put too much strain on your body before it's ready and it'll break."

That made sense.

Nothing more could be said since at that moment Elisa turned towards them and began her descent, no doubt in an effort to manage a landing superior to the last one. That is not to say that the last one was poor but there had been moments of instability that almost proved to be too much for her teammate to compensate for. Watching it happen this time, she could see a marked improvement in stability of the gliding and it looked as though she was measuring her movements precisely. Seconds passed and, when the gargoyle's feet were mere inches above the ground, the woman let herself drop the rest of the way. This time only a flicker of instability but Elisa quickly smothered it, officially making this her first proper landing.

"Gliding's harder than I thought," Elisa said, caping her wings over her shoulders with barely a thought. "Sure wish Goliath or Angela were here to help with the details."

"No kidding! It'd be nice if I had Goku here to teach me but in this world wishing either doesn't do anything or it comes with one helluva catch," Xander said with his usual lopsided grin. "Still, at least we've got plenty of training time to get everything right."

"I've been meaning to ask about that," Elisa said, turning to the young man. "Why give us almost twenty years to train? If we're that weak, wouldn't it make more sense to recruit people that were already strong and have them train for half the time."

"I dunno. Never thought to ask them," Xander replied with a shrug. "Maybe aside from the first team that'll be tackling Stepponwolf there aren't any other strong people to recruit. It's also possible they're trying to do this secretly so they had to stay away from the warriors people'd have their eyes on so no one figures out what they're up to."

She almost asked why gods who were working towards creating a team to protect the planet Earth would need to hide their intentions when the truth appeared in her mind. Stepponwolf had been defeated once when he'd come to remake the Earth and would not risk failing his master again. It would only make sense that this time he would leave nothing to chance and therefore would send scouts, spies, to the planet ahead of his arrival. They would almost certainly be tasked with locating potential threats and either eliminating them immediately or studying them so that their master could slay them at a later date. If this was so then gathering, training and strengthening a team with potential to become strong was smarter than selecting from those who were already strong.

"Whatever. I'm gonna get some food," Elisa said, turning in the general direction of their log cabin. "Even when they're not doing anything, gargoyles have large appetites."

Indeed, if there was one thing that could be said about all three of them was that their bodies needed to ingest as much energy as they used up with their training. As a result they'd been forced to incorporate hunting the local wild animals into their training in order to keep their food stores as high as they needed. It also allowed them to become familiar with what the island had to offer both in wildlife as well as what herbs could be harvested to be used in preparation of the meat. Add to that the various recipes that each of them knew and it made for some rather satisfying meals. Both Elisa and Xander, however, seemed to be unused to hunting and preparing food in this manner. When she'd asked them about this, they'd told her that before now they'd only ever had to purchase what they needed from a marketplace after half the work had been done for them.

She'd never been coddled like that by the Warlords of Okaara, who insisted that every student be capable of surviving on their own with only the minimal amount of tools and materials. A true warrior knew that you could never be certain where or when you would need food in order to survive but, more often than not, it would not be anywhere near a marketplace. With that being the case she was taught how to hunt various animals, cut away the parts that couldn't or shouldn't be eaten and then prepare what remained for consumption.

_At least here there is more in the way of herbs and spices, _she thought with a small grin, remembering how the last meal had turned out.

On Okaara you were lucky if you could taste a non-meat flavor at all with how little of either you had to work with.

* * *

_**Eight Months Later**_

_**Xander**__**'**__**s POV**_

"Now, I've never taught anything but trick or treat techniques a day in my life, so sorry if I make some mistakes," he said, getting everything he knew straight in his head again and again. "Even with those Okaaran meditation techniques, there're still some blank spots in the memories I got from Goku."

"We'll keep that in mind, now hurry up," Elisa said from her fallen tree log seat a dozen feet away.

It had been a good while since he'd told her about ki and how it could be used to make someone strong but in all that time she'd remained skeptical. Not surprising since to her Goku was a cartoon character and all the stuff the character could do was just too incredible to be believable. He had been tempted to perform one or more of the techniques he could call from his mind easily but had chosen to wait until he was far enough along in his own training to show her something spectacular. Now, after a year and a half of diligent training 'cause, hey, there's nothing else to do, he felt he'd progressed far enough in his training to move beyond mere physical conditioning and light sparring.

Now was the time to begin learning how to fully tap into the benefits of ki usage and to teach his teammates how to use it as well.

"Now ki energy can be translated as life force energy. Most people can't tap into it because they don't have much to begin with and don't have a clue how to get more," he explained, trying to imitate Giles when he'd told them about something from the supernatural world. "I don't know about my Earth but in Goku's world certain martial arts teachers could increase the quantity as well as quality of ki their bodies were capable of generating through training. With the right training you can use it internally to increase your strength, speed, endurance and make your blows have greater impact than they otherwise would."

Good. It looked like they both understood that.

"Before you can do anything with your ki, though, you need to learn how to tap into it and control it. Left alone it'll just flow by itself throughout your body but ki control is all about making the ki do what YOU want it to do," he explained before sitting down on the ground and crossing his legs. "So let's start off with some meditation so you can focus your mind inwards and sense your own ki. It'll be easy enough for you to pick up on your physical energy but you'll need to look even deeper to sense your ki. It's like… well, hmmm. It's like your internal speaker's on full blast and you need to filter the noise it's putting out so you can hear your soul speaking to you. Does that make sense?"

"Kinda," Elisa replied before sitting down on the ground like he was, with some adjusting for her tail and wings.

"I believe so," Kori said, being the last to assume the classic meditation position.

"Now it's important to relax because the tenser you are, the louder your body is and the harder sensing your ki'll be. Now let's give it a shot," he said, closing his eyes to begin looking inwards for his own ki. "Remember relax and focus."

Keeping only a metaphorical ear out for Kori and Elisa in case they needed further instruction, he journeyed inwards to find his own ki. He'd practiced doing so off and on since he'd begun his training to keep tabs on how strong he was getting, so it was relatively easy for him to do it. Still it'd been a while since he last checked, so he was curious to see how much stronger it'd gotten since his training had begun. Little by little he passed through the layers of distraction that hid it from his mind until it came into being like the buzzing of a wasp. Once he had a good enough grasp of it that it was almost tangible he examined it and was proud to find that it was now just about as strong as Goku's had been when he'd first defeated the evil King Piccolo. Some people might find this insulting since Goku had been a child at the time he considered it an achievement he'd managed it in under two years of hard training.

_If I keep this pace, then by the time the twenty-ears is up I should be even stronger than Vegeta was when he beat Zarbon,_ he thought with a smile of anticipation.

Opening his eyes since he'd already completed the exercise, he looked at both Elisa and Kori to see how they were doing. Sure, he wasn't telepathic, but he'd found that both women were pretty open when it came to how they expressed their emotions. If they were getting frustrated it'd show on their faces and he'd have to think of a way to get them to calm back down so they could find their ki energy. He could sense that they both had above average ki inside of them so he didn't think it'd be as hard as it would be for an ordinary person.

From what he could tell, Kori was having some difficulty but that was to be expected since she could tap into the energy her body absorbed from the sun both to fly as well as fire off energy blasts. It was hard enough for people who couldn't do such things so he'd known from the beginning she'd have more layers of distraction to pass through than him or Elisa would. However at the same time he could see that she wasn't allowing impatience or frustration hinder her efforts but, considering her warrior training, that was to be expected. He figured it'd probably take a week of no progress before she'd begin expressing frustration and ask him for additional help. If that happened he'd try channeling some of his own ki into her body so she could feel a little more bluntly what that kind of energy felt like.

As for Elisa, she looked to be putting in a good effort and wasn't quite as impatient as he'd thought the detective would be, considering the drastic difference in her normal range of experiences. He imagined that it'd be like if he suddenly had to learn doctorate level science. For her he gave it three days tops before she asked for help, causing him to use the same method he planned to use to help Kori.

He was certain that all they needed was to get their first real taste of what ki energy felt like, and then the odds of them managing to do it on their own after that would go up. Then, just like everything else, repetition would make it as easy as breathing to detect and measure their own ki levels so they could better judge what was and what wasn't possible for them.

"Don't beat yourself up if you can't get it right away," he said, not moving from his sitting position. "On Goku's Earth it took years of training to manage it. Besides, getting mad will just make things worse."

A moment of irritation flashed over Elisa's face before she silenced her annoyance and returned to the task at hand.

Time passed but, when an hour had gone by, he figured that was good enough for an introductory course on ki and besides that there wouldn't be much more they could do until both ladies could detect their own ki.

"Let's call it a day for the ki training," he said, standing up. "It's not something you get on your first day and we've got years for you guys to get the hang of it."

"I felt as though I was getting very close to sensing my ki," Kori said, sounding optimistic about her chances in the future. "However those last few mental steps are proving to be very frustrating."

"You got that right!" Elisa declared, sounding like Snyder usually did whenever he came to harass the Scoobies. "Are you sure you're not just messing with us? I've seen you train and I haven't seen anything like energy blasts."

Typical. Like so many people, they needed proof of something spectacular before they'd truly believe it was possible.

"I guess a little demonstration wouldn't hurt," he said, since he knew that visual aids did wonders for him and Buffy during research sessions.

Looking at the area, it didn't take long for him to spot a decent sized boulder about a hundred yards away that'd do the trick.

"Pay attention, 'cause I'm a little hit or miss with this move. Sometimes it'll work perfectly and other times it'll backfire on me," he said taking up a solid stance with his left shoulder pointed at the boulder.

Both women nodded in understanding.

With that done he once more looked within for his ki but without the whole closed eye meditation bit and, once he had a strong grip on it, he began his execution of Goku's most often used ki technique.

"KKKAAAA-"

He brought the heels of both his hands together in front of him with arms fully extended.

"MMMEEEE-"

He brought both hands to his right hip, channeling his ki down each arm to the hands, where he began to concentrate it in the air between them.

"HHHAAA-"

This was one of the harder parts of the technique, since it required that he not only keep the flow of energy constant but also ensure it remained concentrated as well as contained in a spherical shape. He'd found out the first couple of tries that ki energy, once it left the body, wanted to go all over the place on its own and you needed to use willpower to make it obey you. You couldn't half-ass it either because, if your will was weak, the ki energy would slip out of containment, making it impossible to fire it off successfully.

"MMMEEEE-"

He did the best he could to pour as much ki as he could manage into spherical form between his hands until he could tell that forcing any more would make concentration and containment impossible to maintain. Once he was certain that there were no mistakes he thrust both hands forward while creating a weak spot on the side of the sphere he wanted the energy to go, while also sending a pushing surge through his arms to get the ball rolling.

"HHHAAAA!"

He could tell the instant the ki surge reached the sphere between hands that he'd successfully executed the Kamehameha Wave, and so watched as the neon blue energy shot like a cannonball towards the boulder that was its target. The impact was more thunderous than he'd been expecting but it reduced the large stone to so much gravel, even tossing some of the soil into the air. Still, it wasn't as big as Goku's had been when he'd fought against Vegeta for the first time, but that had been when the hero had been training on King Kai's planet and mastered the kaio-ken technique.

Besides that, he now felt like he'd been pounding on a punching bag nonstop for a solid hour due to the amount of ki he'd expended. His ki control wasn't good enough to make sure he could perform the technique efficiently, so he wound up wasting quite a bit of energy. Add to that the consistency issue where execution was concerned and it was safe to say that he was still a ways off from being able to use it reliably in a fight.

Turning back to Kori and Elisa, he could tell that they were more or less impressed with the technique, with the latter showing no sign of doubt now when it came to ki's combat potential.

"So, with enough training, I'll be able to do something like that?" Elisa asked, standing up while looking at the remains of the boulder.

"It'll take a while but, yeah, you will," he said, feeling his strength return to him. "Just keep in mind that my Saiyan body is pretty much built for fighting and has an awesome improvement curve. It'll probably take you longer to build up your ki reserves enough to use the Kamehameha Wave without going completely weak after."

"Something to look forward to then," Elisa said with a smile.

A smile he mirrored because a person always trained harder when they had a goal they wanted reach.

* * *

_**The Island Formerly Owned By Circe**_

_**Ten Months Later**_

_**Elisa**__**'**__**s POV**_

"I think I'm finally getting the hang of gliding," she said as they all sat at their improvised table.

Basically it was a slab of stone that Xander had used his ki to carve out of a boulder and then told them to practice their ki control on. The exercise was to use the ki to smooth out the uneven surface of the stone slab until it was just like a table you'd buy at a store. The trick was to push out just enough ki to scrape away the bits of stone you didn't want without overdoing it and making more work for yourself by scraping out too much and having to start over. Xander, of course, practiced on it with them since, by the young man's own admission, his control could use some work when it came to efficiency.

_I guess it'd be more accurate to say that this is the FOURTH slab of stone that he had to make before we finally got it right,_ she thought before sipping on the squeezed fruit juice residing in a crudely carved wooden cup.

"Good. It'll be nice for stealth operations and, when you need speed, the ki power you'll have by then should let you put fighter jets to shame," Xander said before shoving a good sized piece of meat into his mouth.

She had to admit that the idea of flying around like that sounded like fun and, if she could keep what she gained from this training when she went back home, her life would be that much more wonderful. Demona wouldn't be able to touch her and, if Oberon decided to cause trouble again, she just might be able to give him a fight he never would've seen coming. Her growing closeness to Goliath would also be helped along since there'd now be a time when he wouldn't have to worry about squeezing her into oblivion. He never outright said anything but she knew that, as the strongest gargoyle of his clan, the big guy had trouble with the delicate tasks he encountered. As a result, a 'fear of breaking things' occasionally cropped up, especially during moments when he knew his control could slip.

Her good mood at her current gliding level dimmed somewhat when she took into account the one downside to her new 'improvements'.

Just as Demona had no control over her transformation from gargoyle to human and back again, she had thus far shown no sign that she could control her own change. At dusk and dawn she changed regardless of how much she willed herself to remain human or remain gargoyle. That meant that she'd have to ask Captain Chavez to switch her to the day shift and make sure she wouldn't be expected to show up before sunrise. Goliath and his clan were still considered to be the delusions of people who'd been through a harrowing experience rather than anything REAL. She knew all too well that if she tried to walk into work like nothing had changed, it wouldn't end well.

_Maybe I can convince that relative of Puck's to take his '__gift__' back,_ she thought as she put another forkful of food into her mouth. _This ki training of Xander's is hard but there's no arguing with the results._

Indeed as it stood now she was faster and stronger than she'd been before arriving on the island and she would only get stronger the longer she trained. Given that they still had eighteen years of training to go through before they would be expected to confront Stepponwolf, she fully expected to be capable of handling just about anything. While it'd be nice to be able to transform into a gargoyle anytime she wanted, she could do without the alternate form since it would be too bothersome to keep it around.

"So what's on the schedule for today?" she asked after finishing her morning meal.

"Nothing special, really," Xander replied nonchalantly as he too finished his meal. "Morning warm ups followed by training to make our bodies stronger and then technique training before finishing off with intense sparring."

"That sounds rather-" Kori said after swallowing the latest mouthful of her fruit juice.

"Dull. Boring," she said, putting in her own opinion.

"I was going to say predictable but those other words are accurate as well," Kori said, looking at her for a moment before returning her gaze to Xander.

"Well, it's not like we've got a lot to work with on this island," Xander said with a frown, showing that he wasn't happy either. "We've had to make everything we've been using ourselves and, of the three of us, Kori's the only one that has any idea how warrior training is supposed to go. Sure, I got some info bouncing around my head from Goku but it's a big mess and even meditation's not doing much good with over a third of the pieces missing."

"But we're not going to progress very far unless something changes," she pointed out, figuring it was common sense that when you ran out of things to learn, you stopped growing stronger.

"Then we just have to hope that the rest of our teammates have some skills they can teach us," he said with a shrug. "A team's usually five or six people, right? That means there're at least two more people that'll show up sooner or later. Maybe more."

"Maybe more?" she asked, not understanding what he meant by that.

"Basketball teams have five people play at one time, hockey has six, baseball has nine and football has eleven," he replied, letting her in on his thoughts. "When they told me about what's coming, they didn't say anything about how many people were on the A team we're supposed to be backup for or how many of us there'd be. Still, I gotta believe that they're not just choosing random people with power from all over the place. All of us will have jobs to do, a role to play, and we can figure that out based on what each of us can do or what we know."

"That makes sense. We've got your ki training and Kori has both her Tamaranian powers as well as her Okarran training," she said, mentally going over what she knew.

"And we have Elisa's detective training along with partial access to the abilities natural to a gargoyle," Kori said finishing off the summary.

"Yep! Our recruiters probably plan to have the others fill some positions, too," Xander said, nodding in agreement. "Probably won't know what they are until the others get here."

"Well, I hope they don't take too long getting here," she said, standing up to begin her morning run. "I'd also appreciate it if our recruiters at least brought us a week's worth of clothes. This outfit's starting to get a little worn out."

Indeed, ever since she'd arrived on the island and begun her training, she hadn't seen any sign that they'd be supported with shelter, food, training equipment or even replacement clothing. All they'd been given to work with was whatever they'd had on them at the time they'd been transported to the island and what they could fashion from available materials. They'd done their best to make do with this but, whether it was strengthening their bodies or sparring with each other, the wear and tear was beginning to show, along with a bit of stink.

Washing their clothes in the nearby lake with only water and a brush made with coarse animal hair could only do so much.

Personally she gave their clothes another year, maybe two, before they'd have to figure out how to make animal skin clothing to replace the rags that would be pointless to wear.

She was about to say more when she felt… something… intrude on her mind and it was not something that could be ignored. Focusing for a moment, she quickly realized that something was setting off her ki sense, causing her to put more effort into figuring out where it was relative to the cabin. It was during this effort that she discovered that it was not just one ki signal she was detecting but two signals. One was at the lake to the southeast while the other was close to the center of one of the denser forests to the west of the log cabin.

"Huh. Guess the 'bosses' decided we're far enough along in our own training to handle two new teammates instead of just one," Xander said with a look of pleasant surprise. "I'll go check out the lake if you ladies'll check out the forest. Sound good?"

It didn't really matter to her one way or the other so she nodded and a moment later Kori did so as well.

"Be careful when you find out who it is," Xander said, striding towards the door. "No telling how they were recruited or what kind of briefing they got. They might be a bit angry. Maybe enough to lash out at the first person they see."

"You sure it'll be that bad?" she asked, being a bit skeptical. "Puck's people can be a bit of a pain but even they know when to get serious. They'd make sure to tell whoever's here now how serious things are."

"Maybe, but what if the person they recruited isn't… well, isn't a hero?" Xander asked, pausing just one step shy of making it outside.

"What do you mean?" Kori asked, sounding a little confused. "Why wouldn't they make sure that these new team members were of virtuous character?"

"Because they want to win," Xander replied firmly, without a trace of idealism. "If Stepponwolf wins, it's the end of Earth and probably the end of them, too. If they think that adding someone to the team that's closer to the enemy in how they fight will help make sure we win, I have no trouble seeing them do it."

It was with those words in mind that she left with Kori for the woods and, even though she hoped that it was just Xander being a little paranoid, she'd keep her guard up just the same.

He'd shown good judgment so far, after all.


End file.
